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Like many other communities, most of the families had a pig and grew their own vegetables. Our garden was cultivated and the pig styes in the pub yard were full of friend’s pigs. There was an arrangement with the army so that the ‘swill’ or food wastage was brought to the yard from the Village Hall, which was the dining room for other ranks, and then it was given to these pigs to fatten them up for Christmas. How times have changed! The pigs always stayed happy and healthy and were even allowed to stroll out when the cleaning operations took place. One old sow took her morning walk to the old ladies living in the Alms Houses nearby and always came back. There was panic at the Red Cow when my father slaughtered them and my mother helped the uninitiated to put away the pork and salt the bacon. This was the only time that my parents could make pork pies, sausage and haselet etc, to their own recipe, since the MOF laid down rules and instructions for the ingredients that they were allowed to use. This annoyed Dad intensely because some of the pork was replaced by PAB — I think that was what it was called. This substitute was a tasteless ingredient similar to soya granules which soaked up water and added weight to the sausage meat. Probably extremely nourishing!

How I hated the smell of lard and fat at putting away time. It was at one particular pre-Christmas pig-killing episode that my mother had an accident. The pork had been prepared for the sausage meat and the village policeman, a friend of the family, was turning the handle of the old fashioned mincer when there was shout ‘My hand hurts’. Mum had been pushing pork into the machine and had not realised till it was too late that her fingers were caught in the machine. The policeman nearly fainted and Mum actually wound back the handle to release her fingers. Consequently we had a sad Christmas with Mum in Lincoln hospital, as it had crushed two fingers so badly that she had to lose a part of them. This did not prevent her from knitting, sewing and making sausage and pork pies after they healed!

However my favourite smell was the pig potatoes. They were boiled in a coal-fired copper in the old washhouse outside the kitchen door. We were sometimes allowed to eat one of the better potatoes, and they were delicious even if they were damaged or waste potatoes from father’s farmer friends. The potatoes were fed to the pigs along with the swill. Another unhygienic habit that was allowed was the milking of our favourite cow. My father had a field on the Howell Rd where he kept his beast that had to go to Sleaford market when ready for the abbatoir, and we also had this cow. Every day another old friend took my sister and I to milk this cow in the field. Looking back I’m sure he never washed his hands and we drank this milk and Mum made butter too. We still survived and the butter was delicious. This field was the only place in Heckington that was bombed. No one knew about it until the remains of an incendiary bomb was found there.

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