大象传媒

Everyone knew that Aunt Joe cooked a fine bacon puddin. It was one of the things her Bill loved most. The war had started but by mid 1940 nothing much seemed to be happening in Custom House other than rationing and air raid drills so Joe decided to make a bacon puddin. She saved up her coupons and got all the ingredients and baked the puddin. Then the air raid siren sounded and it wasn't a drill but the first of many bombing raids the luftwaffe launched in the Blitz on the Royal Docks. Joe headed for the Anderson shelter in the back yard and waited out the raid. When the all clear sounded she emerged to smell burning..........It was the bacon puddin. All those coupons gone to waste.

After that Joe wouldn't bake another bacon puddin for fear that it would be spoilt again by some bleedin raid. Well by 1944 the blitz was a distant memory and feeling more confident Joe decided to bake another Bacon puddin, she saved her coupons got the ingredients and put the puddin in the oven. The sirens went off again. The first Doudlebugs started to descend on their random way across East London. Back in the Anderson until the all clear and that burnt smell again from another ruined puddin.

Right no more puddin not until those bleedin Germans stopped bombing. And so it remained until VE Day and everyone celebrated, going crazy at the end to all those years of war.

Many years later Joe decided it would be safe enough to bake another bacon puddin. There were no more Germans who were going to spoil her cooking. Rationing had finished and her Bill had't had a bacon puddin since before the Blitz. So Joe made her bacon puddin.

As she was pulling it out of the oven, she turned to see her eldest daughter standing in the kithen doorway looking down, "Mum I'm pregnant"............

Germans or no Germans, Joe never made another pudding after that.

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