大象传媒

Miss Daphne Oliver
Edited transcript of a taped interview

Mrs Fanshaw, she was very nice, she always used to say, what are you having for your lunch today? I used to say, I don鈥檛 know, that鈥檚 a movable feast, a few weeds. Put them in the saucepan and cook them, because there was no food, you see. We had to make do. I mean, our vegetables. Well, we had one carrot a week, or one parsnip a week, I mean, can you imagine, or one swede a week, and if you had two, you were lucky, and you had to share it. What you had to do, if you were living at St Martin鈥檚, because the Bailiff let us have his son鈥檚 house, so we were very lucky, and I used to go to Mr Taylor, who had a little cycle shop along the Grande Rue, perhaps it would be your turn, you鈥檇 have one carrot, you鈥檇 have a parsnip, I鈥檇 have a swede, and that鈥檚 all you鈥檇 have for a week. No meat. You had the coupon.
I kept rabbits, but then again there was no food. The only thing is with thistles, its very nice, people think it was easy, but it wasn鈥檛, because it was too wet, and rabbits like dry food, and there was no dry food in the Island for those rabbits, no seed, no what do they call them, I forget, the nuts that they eat, and so they died of spotted liver. The only animal I kept, and I was very very lucky, and I don鈥檛 remember who gave it to me, I had an angora rabbit, and it was white, and it was very friendly. Jim Langlois鈥檚 mother, she had a spinner. She said, Daphne, what are you doing out here? I said, we鈥檝e had to come out here to live. So she said. 鈥淚 understand you鈥檙e keeping rabbits.鈥� I said 鈥測es, I鈥檝e got an angora one.鈥� 鈥淥oh good,鈥� she said. 鈥淲ould you like me to come and see it.鈥� I said 鈥測es please,鈥� so she came to see it, she said 鈥淭he wool鈥檚 lovely, I鈥檒l spin it for you.鈥� So I said, 鈥淥h, would you., that would be nice.鈥� She was ever so sweet. Lady Sherwill, she really was very kind.. She said 鈥淲ould you like me to take the wool,鈥� I said yes, so she did what she had to do, and Lady Sherwill bought the wool and made jumpers. But she dyed the wool, she didn鈥檛 only keep it white, she dyed it all different colours, you know what she was like, she liked colourful things, always in red. She used to come to tea, every Friday. She said one day to Miss Randell 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 know how lucky you are to have somebody to look after you during the war鈥�, because I stayed with her all the war and we had two moves within ten weeks, which was not funny. Oh no, and leave your furniture, that was the worst part, you didn鈥檛 know where you were going to sleep, or if you were going to have a blanket, or a cover, or anything, and then you could have been turned out either the night or the morning, and then where were you going again?

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