大象传媒

Eating out in hotels, restaurants and public houses is something that I have never done readily and still don鈥檛. Give me a meal at home any day! At your own dining table, you know exactly what you are eating, no delays between courses occur, there is the welcome privacy factor and you are at ease in the familiar surroundings. The meal represents better value for money, too. Like most school friends, I grew up without ever going out for a meal with the family. It was just not part of working-class life. The war imposed further restrictions, but at our house there were other reasons. When my dad had a leg amputated, he was hopping around on a single crutch in Long John Silver style, his mobility severely curtailed. Worse, my mother lost all her hair before she was 30 and was forced to wear wigs for the rest of her days. She had no eyebrows and eyelashes and was aware that these deficiencies were easily noticed. It did not make her a recluse, but she was uneasy in the company of strangers, avoided cafes and didn鈥檛 join organisations. We were a bit lame-duck!
At a much higher social level, the writer, Kingsley Amis, had a similar dislike to dining out. When I heard him interviewed on radio some years ago, the reason he gave for preferring meals at his own table was that he lost the right to pour if he was out of the house!
I would not be much more than eleven when the opening of the British Restaurant in the bottom house of Tunstall Terrace gave me a chance to spread a wing and have a first meal in public. These restaurants were a well-meaning innovation and much welcomed by a war-weary public. Lord Woolton was Minister for Food at the time and what made them so attractive was that they were non-profit making, while an added bonus was that food was served for which you did not require coupons. The result was that the rations at home were helped go further.
The system known as rationing had not been introduced at the outbreak of war in 1939, but the rate at which the German U-boats began to sink our merchant vessels made it unavoidable eventually. My dad welcomed the move. It meant that food, albeit less than what we were used to, was assured for every citizen. Without rationing, the rich would have eaten, while the poor, and that was us at the time, would have gone hungry. Every family in the country was issued with ration books, depending on the number of adults and children, and had to be deposited at a shop of the family鈥檚 choosing. Some registered with the Co-op, but others at corner shops, possibly because the chances were better there of a bit of what was known as under-the-counter food becoming available from time to time! At every weekly shopping, coupons, sometimes known as points, were removed from the book, while certain pages were overprinted with indelible pencil. It was a fair-share-for-all arrangement in theory and the Duke of Northumberland in his Alnwick Castle home would be entitled to exactly the same amount of food per week as the poorest-paid Northumberland collier. The Act provided for one ration book per person and no more.
Our local authority of the day, the Sunderland Rural District Council, was responsible to the Ministry of Food for the conversion of the Tunstall Terrace house to a restaurant for public use. It was hardly an ideal property and today鈥檚 Health and Safety Inspectors would have given it a low mark, but it was centrally situated and easy to get to. There was no neon strip lighting outside, simply a wooden notice board signifying that this was a British Restaurant. The cooking took place on the ground floor, while the two upstairs rooms, in which generations of mining families would have slept over the years, was the dining area. At the foot of the stairs sat a cashier, who exchanged your money for two plastic tokens of different colours. With one, you would be supplied with a first course, usually boiled potatoes, meat and a vegetable. The other was needed for a dessert, one of which was, for me, the strangest of combinations - milk pudding and custard! Apple pie with custard, but never a rice pudding!
Not having eaten a meal in a public place before, but encouraged by my mam to give the restaurant a try, I recall a very nervous entry and a distinct feeling of unease at having to share a table with strangers, The world and his wife, and that included some of our teachers, were on the premises, while the queues, the limited space, clouds of steam equivalent to today鈥檚 saunas rising to the ceiling, did not make for the happiest of experiences. The staff was composed of women, who I had heard my dad refer to after he had come home from the Labour Party and Parish Council meetings. They were all what were known in the village as big Labour Women, not because of their stature, but due to their fervour for, and loyalty to, the Socialist cause. It would be a tiring shift that they had to work.
Because of the setting and its limitations, few would leave feeling that they had had their best meal ever! It was a no-win situation, really, and light years away
from Mengs, Carrick鈥檚, The Barnes or Milburn鈥檚. Whether it survived until the end of the war, I cannot say, but in places where they did, and Stafford would be one, they became known as Civic Restaurants. Some years later, on our way from the R.A.F. station there to watch Wolverhampton Wanderers play, we stopped for a Saturday lunchtime meal of fish and chips. How relieved I was to see that there was no milk pudding with custard on offer! No, thanks!

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