大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War Website by Tim Davoile on behalf of Doris Hopkins and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

There was a butcher who worked at Dewhursts in the Burges, he was ever so nice. You always had to queue up and while you did you looked at the various cuts of meat in the window and all the animal carcases hanging up, as well as looking at the butchers. Anyway, I noticed he treated some customers better than others, you know, a little bit extra and when they paid him they held their palm downwards, so they could slip him a sixpence or something. I use to keep seeing this and gradually I learnt. I kept talking nicely to him, asking him what cuts of meat he鈥檇 got and making conversation. One day I happened to mention I was partial to a bit of kidney or liver, but I didn鈥檛 have enough coupons. Well, he must have been feeling a bit weak that day because he slipped me a kidney in with my order, so I slipped him a tanner, palm down. This went on for some time, and he always smiled with a thank you. This one-day, there were some pigs laid on the counter. They all had holes where their tails had been removed. Well I slipped him a sixpence as usual, but he must have had his fingers open and he dropped it in one of the holes. There he was trying to fish out this sixpence from the pig鈥檚 backside while all the customers were watching. He went as red as a turkey cock. I kept registered there; I was on to a good thing. Everyone was doing it, it was how you survived.

Sometimes, instead of going to one of the public shelters we use to go to Cherry Street (Mabel鈥檚 house) and hide under the stairs. This one night, after the all clear, dad called us all into the garden. We stood on the wall and watched the plane that had been doing the bombing, they鈥檇 got the searchlights on it and were firing at it, and you could see the tracer bullets going up. Birmingham could be seen being bombed, but you had to keep it quiet, so as not to let people know how bad the bombing had been, because Birmingham people didn鈥檛 really know the extent of the damage.

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