大象传媒

Message 1 - Fathers Pig

Posted on: 03 November 2003 by Frank Mee Researcher 241911

Hello John,
Thank you for a good laugh and the return of memory's. We too kept pigs and even as a boy in my early years remember the two pigs one squeal.
We were allowed to kill two per year for our own use and two went to the government slaughter house so I always wondered why we kept a minimum of six and often eight of the piglets from the old farrow sow.
In our case the local bobby was in on the act often coming up with Tommy Hutchinson the local butcher who killed and dressed our pigs. He has been known to go in Mums kitchen saying look after my tunic and hat Gladys while I give a hand, That was of course Mums signal to put on more tea and more scones in the oven to eat with real farm butter and home made jam, that bobby knew where his scones were buttered.
I might mention for those people who think all bacon and ham comes ready wrapped from the Supermarket that my Fathers pigs lived the life of Riley in what was for those times the local pig Ritz. They had brick built sty's with raised beds made of wood and covered with clean fresh straw, (Pigs are very clean animals and will not mess their own beds if treated properly). Dad loved his pigs and they fed on the best, he would not use the government issue waste food compound or fish meal. They got fresh vegetable boiled in their own boiler (my job) mixed with corn or corn meal, Lemon Curd Waste from Pumfrey's jam factory and the waste cake and bread from Sparks bakery factory. Every one said Dad had the best bacon and ham in the area. We stood for hours salting sides and hams when newly killed, then I went to bed down a passage where sides of bacon and hams hung on hooks in the high vaulted ceiling. Needless to say I never went to school in all those years without a breakfast of bacon inside me, having reached the age of 74 I often wonder what the food fadists would have to say about that as it was always with fried bread and anything else in season we could fry.
I had a couple of bad illnesses early in the war and Mum would say we have to have the Half Crown Doctor because that was the cost of a visit though our doctor often called in and waived the fee. Come Christmas Dad would have a goose for the doctor which was probably how he really got paid. I also saw him get small packets of bacon on odd occasions too so in days of make do with what you had it evened itself out.
There were many more funny and happy memories during the war than miserable ones but people today cannot understand how that could be, war is hell, true, but if you did not laugh at times it would have been the madhouse.
Regards Frank Mee.