大象传媒

With great respect to my late Mother she was not the kind of inventive cook that wartime conditions necessitated but with only an Army allowance and an allotment from his pay by my Dad and the rationing system I never remember being really really hungry. I recall the thrill of going to the Ministry of Food (MOF) office to collect a new Ration Book full of coupons - which became more and more dog-eared and stained as it was handled and the strips of coupons ripped out. We made occasional visits to a "British Restaurant in a Nissen Hut. I remember that coloured tokens were issued and think that a two or three course meal cost one shilling (5p). I think we had some kind of concession because my Dad was in the Army. I also remember my Mother helping my best friend's, a marvellous pastry cook, by laboriously paring the pork off what we now relish as spare ribs for Cornish pasties to take to the beach. Such by products, including offal, were not "on ration".
We regularly went to my Uncle's home on the edge of Dartmoor for Christmas, sometimes meeting my Dad there on leave. We went on rabbit hunts on the moor with a couple of ferrets, nets and "Spot" the terrier. Before the days of myxamatosis, stuffed and slow roasted by my Aunt they were an absolutely delicious (and free) supplement to rations. Chicken was a luxury reserved for Christmas and the ones we enjoyed in Devon had been fattened up with vegetable parings which were crisped in the oven and mashed with bran and water. Likewise peel from any oranges that one was lucky enough to get was kept and carefully dried to put into Christmas/party fare. A bit of low key Black Market, perhaps, was when my Aunt, finger to her lips, produced a tin of clotted cream from under the dustbin after the local dairyman had delivered the milk.
While visiting Yeovil towards the end of the war, a consignment of large and red and crisp and very sweet Canadian apples arrived in the shops. I was walking along munching one while watching a convoy of tanks driving by and bumped into one of the white painted posts that were erected on the kerbs in Yeovil (to help drivers in black out). The apple popped out of my hand into the gutter and I bawled my eyes out when my Mother would not let me retrieve it!
Other products from abroad that I remember include; dried egg in tins fascinatingly decorated with the Stars and Stripes and a depiction of a Liberty Ship, tinned Snoek, a fish from South African waters not unlike mackerel, and whale meat, particularly when my Grandma served my Uncle a portion and he complimented her for not only being able to get but cook so well such a delicious piece of beef!
TRAVEL
Journeys from Cornwall to Devon and Somerset were by train via, of necessity, Plymouth North Road Station, an always busy place not only because of sailors en route to and from the Royal Navy Dockyards at Devonport. I was always excited nearing the Brunei Bridge at Tamar because I could then see the many warships anchored on the river and in its creeks. The area was, of course, a prime target and on one occasion the bombed out houses bordering the railway line were still smoking.
Ordering a cup of tea in the crowded Station Restaurant my Mum was served one in a filthy cracked cup and just could not stomach it. Seeing that she was not going to drink it a sailor asked if he could have it explaining that he had been at sea for six weeks.
Waiting for a train in Yeovil, another stopped and out stepped some soldiers dressed immaculately in "jungle greens" with some Red Cross Nurses here and there amongst them. What puzzled me was that they were near skeletons. The explanation was that they had been prisoners of the Japanese.
MISCELLANEOUS
Communities were invited to contribute to The Spitfire Fund and I like to think that I helped to buy one presented to the RAF and named Camborne-Redruth after I had paid 6d to sit in the cockpit of one in an otherwise empty shop in Redruth. (Four others were presented in the names of other communities in Cornwall at an "advertised" cost of 拢5000 each but actually costing twice that).
Yeovil had a number of Edwardian terraces and I saw lorry loads of ornate railings being demolished in showers of sparks from acetylene cutters. (I have read reports that the raw material thus salvaged was rarely used as publicised but that the measure was to induce another sense of contributing to the war effort).
In the lead up to D-Day the anchorage in Falmouth was full of all kinds of warships many flying a mini barrage balloon. Many of the vessels were troopships to land the follow up US Army Divisions camped just inland onto the beaches on D+l and the infantry landing craft from them were creaming to and from the pier head crazily by very casual American sailors - compared with the Royal Navy crews who always arrived and departed with the drill of presenting boathooks.
Italian POWs walking freely, not in the town, but in the countryside just beyond where I lived dressed in dungarees with bright coloured patches on them.
THE END
On VE then VJ Day all the factory and tin mine hooters were sounded simultaneously at the declared time.
There was a party for us children with as good a spread as possible on tables down the middle of the street at which I would not be separated from a cardboard Glengarry.
Then my Dad came home in his natty demob suit.

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