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PART 3
RATIONS
During the war, everyone was issued with a ration book and each page was printed with coupons for the various food items, cheese, butter, sugar and so on and the grocer would cut out the relevant coupon when one went for ones ’rations’. I used to do the week’s shopping on a Saturday morning, at Mellor’s Stores, in Kingston Road, where we were ‘registered’. (This was where the Indian Restaurant and Fish and Chip shop is now. There used to be two little cottages with long front gardens where the grocers is now on the corner of Fairs Road). I used to shop for the whole family and would have three shopping lists and the eleven ration books. I would do the whole week’s shopping and take it home in my dolls’ pram. There was plenty of room for it all! Bread was 4½d for a large loaf (1½p); eggs, when you could get them, came in big wooden boxes and the eggs tasted of the wood — horrible. The American dried egg powder was better although there used to be lots of jokes about it, it was very good as scrambled eggs and my mother made lovely cakes using it.
The meat ration was calculated by price, so how much one got was dependent upon the cut of meat. Offal was ‘off ration’ and our butcher (Fullers, next door to The Railway Arms) had a system whereby everyone got their share by virtue of the initial letter of their surname and this was put up on a sign in the shop - ‘Offal - names A — G’ and so on. I had to watch for that to make sure each of my families got their fair share.
Rations could be helped out by going to the ’British Restaurant’. The one in Leatherhead was at the top of King George’s Park (where now is the car park in Fairfield Road, opposite the British Legion). There one could get a main course and pudding at a very reasonable cost. I remember the Manageress as being a very large lady called Mrs. Smith! We had a greengrocer who came round with a horse and cart. I do not think that I ever knew his real name; to us he was Billy Bags because that was how the vegetables and fruit came, in big bags on the cart. I had Acidosis as a small child and could not tolerate any food with a high acid content and consequently there were a number of things I could not eat. Fruit was the biggest problem because I could digest only bananas and, of course, they were in extremely short supply. I recall being in ‘Fairs, (the greengrocers in North Street in Leatherhead), one day when a lady came in and asked for bananas. When she was told that there were none she became very abusive and pointed out that there were several bunches hanging in the window. Of course these were artificial and were there to make the window look attractive. I used to go out to Billy Bags and ask, very pathetically, if he had anything I could eat! On the very rare occasion when he did have bananas he always made sure that he kept a few for me.
At the beginning of the war our milkman was Mr.Starley and he delivered the milk with a horse and cart. It was a big white and brown horse and I loved it. I remember the day the horse bolted when it was frightened during an air raid. The milk cart was left jammed in our gateway and the horse ended up in our next-door-neighbour’s back garden. Our next milkman drove a milk float and I recall one day, during an air raid, my friend Denise, Auntie Margaret and I were sitting in the shelter when there was a knock at the door. Very reluctantly my aunt went to see who it was and found Jim, the milkman, collecting the weekly milk money. My aunt was furious and gave Jim a very sound telling-off. Jim retorted that he didn’t have time waste on air raids he had to get his money collected and get back to the office with it!
We had lovely Christmases. Because our family all lived so close, we always spent the holiday together. Of course there were no turkeys, and chickens were hard to come by- real luxury! One of our neighbours, Mr Bell, who worked for the Gas Company, kept chickens and rabbits and he supplied our Christmas needs. My mother and aunts made wonderful Christmas dinners of roast rabbit. For weeks before the holiday everyone saved sugar, margarine a so on, to make cakes. They really did marvels. I think there used to be special extra rations of dried fruit at Christmas time and I seem to remember oranges too.
There were many ways of stretching the rations. Vegetables became very important and we ate lots of them. There were vegetarian recipes being thought up all the time. Dear Marguerite Pattern was always on the wireless giving recipes and advice. Walton Pie is one dish that comes to mind (I think Mr Walton was the Minister of Food). One ‘treat’ that my mother once made was Banana Cream. It was made with parsnips and banana essence and IT WAS DISGUSTING!!!
We children used to do our bit. We used to go blackberrying and collected crab apples for jelly; there was extra sugar allowed for jam making. In the autumn we went out looking for mushrooms. Our favourite place was under the trees where Kelvin Avenue is now; some of the mushrooms there grew to the size of dinner plates. We also collected the wild rose hips from the hedgerows. We got paid for these because they were sent to make rose hip syrup, an important source of vitamin C. There were also special school holidays when the older children used to go to the farms and pick up the potatoes. It was cold and dirty work. I never did this because I was too young.

ENTERTAINMENT — going to the ‘pictures’
There were two cinemas in Leatherhead. One, the Crescent, (in Church Street), was very plush. The other, the ABC (in High Street, about where the Council Information Office is now) most certainly was not. In fact it was know locally as ‘The Bug Hutch’. (It later became the Leatherhead Repertory Theatre). It was cheaper than The Crescent so it was very popular with the soldiers as they did not get paid a lot. There was a steep flight of stairs down to the booking office. The programme was continuous in those days - you got up to leave when you had seen the picture from where you came in. Unlike the posh Crescent, there were no carpets on the floors at the Bug Hutch, so during a film, as people went in and out, especially the soldiers in their boots, it was almost impossible to hear a thing. I recall sitting in the front row on the Bug Hutch to watch ‘Fantasia’ and coming out with the most awful crick in my neck.
Our special treat was a weekly trip to the cinema on a Wednesday afternoon. My mother would take me to The Crescent and we would enjoy the films - always two films in those days - a short ‘B’ film and the main one. And then of course there was the Pathé News. We heard the news on the wireless but at ‘the pictures’
(the usual term for the cinema in those days) we saw and heard reports from the war correspondents following the troops into
every theatre of the conflict. We saw newsreel of London and Coventry during the Blitz, India and Burma, North Africa and Italy. We went to Dunkirk for the evacuation and back into Normandy for the invasion on D-Day, Paris for the liberation and across the Rhine into Germany. One day, during the newsreel, my mother insisted that I had to sit on the floor because she did not want me to see the film. I couldn’t resist having a peep though and I saw all these terribly thin people in horrid striped clothes being helped by soldiers. It was the first film of the liberation of the Belsen concentration camp. Another time there was a film of Lord Louis Mountbatten in the jungle talking to a group of soldiers, he told them to come closer so that he would not have to shout and, as the men moved forward, there was my daddy, right in the front row.
We children mostly made our own entertainment. We spent hours in the fields and woods behind the houses in Albany Park Road. I seldom played with girls, I went everywhere with my cousins and their friends. There was Ted and Fred, Donnie Hall and Jackie Squires and the boy who had been evacuated from London and lived with the Bell’s next door to Ted - I have never been able to remember his name! I was years younger than the boys but I tagged along everywhere with them. Years later I realised that the only reason they put up with me was because if they had forgotten anything, I was always willing to go home for it! We went down to the River Mole and into Oxshott Woods, played on the half-made haystacks during hay-making and always, it seemed, the sun shone! I remember being very upset one day because I was not allowed to go into the shed. The boys were in there - doing something!- and I was very firmly kept out. I went home to my mother is high dudgeon and complained long and loud. At Christmas I found out why. The boys had been making a little chair just big enough for me! It was painted blue — my favourite colour.
Entertainment of another sort was provided in our road one day. Our next-door-neighbours had a couple of teen-age daughters and in due time they became friendly with American soldiers based nearby. One day the house was invaded by a crowd of American Military police. One of the soldiers had gone AWOL and had been hiding for weeks in the loft. He was taken away at gunpoint, with bare feet and in handcuffs. There were never any soldiers next door after that and we children did miss the candy and chewing gum.
The wireless was very important to us during the war and I remember Tommy Handley in ITMA and Children’s Hour with Uncle Mac and ‘Goodnight children — everywhere!’. There were Vera Lynn and Petula Clark (as a little girl she lived in Chessington and I was at school with her cousins); the radio Doctor with advice, Arthur Askey, Rob Wilton with ‘The day war broke out my missus said to me. . .’
After the news in the evening there always used to be a very strange little programme. It consisted of the announcer reading out short phrases like ‘The moon is full of elephants’ and ‘The Camels are hairy’. These were, of course coded messages to our Agents in Europe and to the Resistance.

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