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"I used to get a ration card, and erm, it was quite restricted in what you could get. But it seemed better to do that. As I say, families would get together and they would have one good meal. You just had to rely on, well people grew vegetables in their garden, they turned them over to a vegetable plot, which was a good thing. If you had an allotment or anything like that, I mean, it was wonderful. You could grow everything, and exchange things. If somebody, for instance, if somebody could manage with the tea ration and have a bit over, they’d exchange with somebody for a little more sugar and do things like that. But, there weren’t many things; it was very basic, very basic. I mean, to get a bit of fish was marvellous. Again, there weren’t the fishing boats going out, of course, like they would in peace time. But you were glad, even with a freshwater fish. If somebody offered you one that they caught themselves you’d sort of try and tart it up, when you cooked it sort of thing, and erm, make it edible. There was Lord Woolton, he was the Food Minister, and there used to be a pie that we made, and it was called ‘Woolton Pie’, and, that was from sort of bits of beef, well you couldn’t roast it, it was too tough. You’d have to sort of cook it very slowly in the oven, but you see you didn’t, people didn’t have refrigerators then like they’ve got now, at all. You might have an ice box, but then most of the ice people were Italians that used to supply you with ice everyday, and of course they’d gone back to Italy most of them. Again you didn’t have the advantage of that, so it was a job keeping things. To spread it out between family like that, everybody got a little bit for themselves, and helped each other. Children always had milk, but occasionally if it was in short supply only the children had milk. It wasn’t like milk today, it was just full-cream milk you know. But of course much cheaper, I think it was about thruppence ha’penny a pint — three old pennies and a half for a pint. It seems crazy, to what it is now — 49 pence, I think it is? And that’s not full-cream. Not that we need it, we’ve learnt a lot since then haven’t we. People had hens to get the eggs, ‘cause eggs were rationed. Unless you kept them you couldn’t always get, because of the transport. If you had transport well you couldn’t run it. If you had a car like my father did before the war, I think 18 months into the war you just couldn’t run it. Petrol was, well it had to come to this country, and there were all the u-boats putting things down. The merchant navy was hit very bad, terribly bad. They were the ones who would bring any food into the country, or the petrol et cetera. He just put [the car] up, I think the engineer took the tyres off and put it up on blocks in the garage."

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