大象传媒

I was born in 1942 and am therefore considered a "war baby". I refused to sleep apparently because my mother had been absolutely petrified as the doodle bugs went over every night. We lived 18 miles north of Manchester and Salford was very heavily bombed.
There was a whole family of evacuees came to live in our village of Whitewell Bottom in the Rosendale Valley at least I remember a mum and about five children. I believe they came from Salford and were extremely poor.
I remember having a doll's pram with wooden wheels because "spoke" wheels were not available during the war. I also remember having a mustard coloured knitted woollen teddy with brown buttons for its eyes as you couldn't buy proper teddy bears in wartime.
I remember our living room window having a heavy duty paper roller blind grey in colour as part of the blackout procedures.
I remember people having tins of dried egg powder with which to bake cakes. My mum didn't. We were lucky. My Uncle Harry had a "pen", a smallholding where he kept hens, ducks geese and turkeys. He also kept two pigs. So we were never short of either bacon or eggs.
I remember being behind the counter in my mothers shop. She had a drapers and stationers in the village for over twenty years and I used to watch her cutting out coupons from peoples ration books. I remember that sheets, pillowcases and towels all had a "utility" mark, a sign of reliabilty during the war.
I had a Mickey Mouse gasmask. I remember trying it on once, the smell of the rubber still lingers, but I don't know what happened to it after the war. My mum was not a hoarder and no doubt threw it out. It would be worth a fortune now.
All kinds of foods were rationed, butter, sugar, meat and there were few luxuries. During the week our ration was qtr lb of corned beef with which people made hash and pies. Chocolate was in short supply. Our local butchers speciality was potted meat, a combination of all the bits and ends of meat he could find, minced up, boiled and put into individual dishes to set. My father refused to eat this saying he liked his meat before it was potted. And in similar vein he refused to eat either corned beef or sausages. He always said that sausages were too big a mystery for him.
I remember a sack of sugar appearing in my bedroom. I was told to say nothing about it to anyone and I discovered many years later that it was the result of black market trading. So we weren't short of sugar either.
Long after the war ended I remember when sweets came off rationing. I believe it was in 1952 and I can still remember going with my mother down the Billington's in Rawtenstall and buying lots and lots of sweets and chocolates and making complete pigs of ourselves. For us this was paradise.
All these anecdotes may make the war sound horrendous but I was not aware of people being miserable or going short of things. People just accepted it and got on with life. Perhaps the people of today would benefit from a spell of wartime deprevation. I think it did us all a power of good.

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