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My busy war

MY wartime childhood was a busy one . . . I was a paperboy, delivering during the blackout; I worked (unpaid) in a food warehouse; and, towards the end of the war, I became a Co-op butcher's boy.

And I left every job with an abiding memory.

It was on my paper round that I was kissed by an angel! My final delivery of the evening paper was to the caretaker's house at the Grove Cemetery in wooded Persley, Aberdeen. In the blackout no one could see me, so I was able to take a shortcut home by going through the cemetery, climb the back wall and cross the railway line (I knew the train times, so I was never in any danger.)

On this particular evening I was strolling in brilliant moonlight through the graveyard. Stone angels mounted many of the gravestones. I stopped to look at one monument because an angel that definitely had not been there the night before topped it.

As I stood there, the angel spread her wings and flew down towards me! One of her wings brushed my cheek and then she was away. I yelled out in fright. Wet myself! I was up that wall and over the rail line like a bat out of hell. When I eventually got home I blurted out my story to Ma. "Dinnae worry yersel', laddie," she said. "Jist think o' it . . . ye've been kissed by an angel."

An angel? Of course it wasn't. I worked it out later. It was simply an owl that I had disturbed.

The warehouse job, I did for nothing because I got the perk of sitting alongside the lorry driver as he delivered flour and stuff around Aberdeen and the bakers were very kind to me, giving me bags of pies and stuff to take home to Ma.

But it's the warehouse itself that lives in my mind. My very first job was to weigh out raisins and fill 1lb bags with them. A warehouseman showed me the ropes and, when he was satisfied I could do the job, said he was going off to do something else. Then he said: "Min' laddie, ye're nae tae scoff ony o' thae raisins! (In English, "Mind lad, you're not to eat any of those raisins.")

And then he added: "I'll be keepin' an eye on ye!" With that, he pulled out his left eye and left it lying on the bench staring balefully right at me! It was a glass eye. But not a raisin passed my lips.

In the Co-op butcher's shop there was a strict rationing regime. At the end of a Saturday, we were each given a little something to take home with us. But I got the littlest of all, because, the head butcher said, my Ma had not registered our ration books with him!

Meat was in extremely short supply. One of my jobs was to make the sausages. I had to scran the back shop for every little bit of meat, no matter what it was — bits of brain, lumps of fat, all the cuttings. I had to pick up bits that had been dropped on the sawdust-covered floor, give them a wipe and chuck them into the mincer.

I then mixed the minced stuff with water and seasoning powder, ready to be put through the sausage machine. At this stage, I used to have to shout through to the front shop: "Charlie, do you want pork or beef sausages?" If the reply was "Pork", I carried on making the sausages. If it was "Beef", I then had to add some red colouring powder to the mixture before carrying on.

What I could never understand was that the beef sausages, although containing that extra ingredient, cost less than the pork sausages.

Ma complained to me once: "Why dae ye nivver tak' hame some sausages?" I daren't tell her it was because I knew exactly what went into them! But I promised that I would get her some sausages. One day, while the front shop was very busy and I was on my on through the back, I took some prime steak and first-class seasoning and made a batch of perfect sausages for Ma. She cooked them that night. Da had one bite and said: "Fit the hell kind o' sausage is this? Could ye nae get real anes?" My two sisters both turned up their noses and left the table. Ma said she'd try her's later.

Truth be told . . . Charlie's Co-op sausages (made by me, with the scrapings off the floor) were regarded as the best in the area!

I was Ma's favourite when it came to shopping for strictly rationed food. I used to be despatched to our local Co-op butcher carrying our ration books. Sometimes I'd have to queue for at least an hour before it was my turn to be served. There was a lovely blonde lady behind the counter, and I'd look up at her and say, "Ma says, can I hae something fine?" Or sometimes, "Could I hae something rerr?" "Fine" and "rerr" in the Aberdeen Doric dialect means "exceptionally good and tasty".

The lassie would wink at me, go through to the back shop and come back with a brown paper parcel, hand it to me and put her finger to her lips — I wasn't to tell anyone what I'd got. It was always a prime cut of meat. Afterwards, Ma used to say to me: "Ye're a wee chairmer (charmer) m' bairn!"

I could go on an on, but I think that's enough for today.

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