大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Pam Riding of Kirklees Libraries on behalf of Monica Hawley and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions

I was in elementary school at the beginning of the war and passed the scholarship for grammar school in 1943. As all clothing was 鈥渞ationed鈥�, in that coupons had to be exchanged for anything to wear, this meant that schools which had formally had a very strict uniform code had to relax their rules.
The uniform at my school had been very strict, but during the war if you wore brown in the winter and yellow in summer it was O K , even so my mother had to make the collars for my brown dress from a book of samples of fabric left over from before the war. It took 4 samples to make a collar.
One of my most vivid memories was almost losing my sweet coupons. These coupons were very precious as the weekly allowance was just 3 ounces. I went to school on the train, it was an electric line where the live rail ran alongside the lines and I dropped my coupons on to the lines just by the live rail, I had no hesitation in jumping down and rescuing them, they were far too precious to leave.
Of course we had to carry gasmasks everywhere and the cardboard boxes soon became very tatty, my father has cases made for us by a saddler, these were very thick leather and lasted throughout the war , in fact I still have mine.
My father was a bus driver during the war , this was a reserved occupation which meant that he would not be called up for the forces but he was in the Home Guard as well as working very long hours. It was a great strain driving at night as their were no streetlights and vehicles had only a tiny cross of light from otherwise co vered headlights, even the traffic lights were only a very small dim light, however there was not very much traffic as petrol was not obtainable except for buses, ambulances and emergency vehicles
Although my father and our next door neighbour dug the holes ready for the Anderson shelter we never actually got them, I never knew why. There is a sunken bed in the garden to this day. My aunt who was issued with one, made it very comfortable. As children, my sister and I loved to play in it and sleeping there was a real treat.
Although all food was rationed there was some choice and my mother must have been a genius to keep us all fed and healthy. The choice was a points system for such things as biscuits or jam or dried fruit and each required a certain number of points .My mother considered a small bag of raisins better for us than biscuits .Families had to be registered with a grocer to obtain food as the shop could only get supplies for the numbers registered there and then the coupons were handed over each week .Meat was rationed by price so for instance you could get more if you were to get stewing meat than if you wanted steak. We never had steak.

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