大象传媒

I was born in 1935.
In those times everyone worked locally, no one moved to work, and everyone went to work on pushbikes. Everything was done fairly locally; people would spend their life within 10 miles. All the foods were very seasonal.

We had quite a large house, with a long garden. In those days people tried to be very self sufficient, to keep chickens for example. This was quite a normal thing, and most people grew vegetables.

Meal times were held as a family, everyone sat down to a meal, and it was always a regular time.

When the war got underway we had an Anderson shelter in the back garden, and vegetation grew over it. Everything went on quite normally, we would see planes going over and we would try to decide whether it was one of ours or not. Everybody had a job, fire watching with a stirrup pump, and a kind of galvanized scoop on the end of a pole to gather incendiaries. This was all quite ordinary.

On the roads before you went to school the streets were covered with shrapnel, so we could find souvenirs. We also watched Doodlebugs flying over, and only moved when we heard the engines cutting out.

There was a lot of searching around crash sites for souvenirs.
Education carried on as normal - just because the war was going on we were not just going to stop.

I was evacuated for a year, to Salisbury with my uncle. My uncle worked at a Nestl茅 factory We went down by train, which were still running during the war and they were also quite packed.
It was 1948 before I saw my first ice cream; everything was rationed, and sweets were rationed so much you forgot about them. Over the time everything was getting scarcer and scarcer. Like chicken net, you got so little of it that it wasn鈥檛 worth having.
Everything was sold loose. If you wanted biscuits they would take them out of the tub, or if you wanted butter they would cut it out. Toys were non-existent; you had to make your own!
Up until 1950 or so most people had radio sets which worked on an accumulator which was a kind of big battery. You would have two accumulators; one you would use and one you would take to the shop to get charged. This happened once a week, and there would be shops which did just that.
Everybody was very honest in those days, very open; if you took your bike somewhere you would leave it, nothing was locked up.
I think holidays, if you ever went on holiday, were taken with relatives that lived nearby, even in the 1950鈥檚 people would get one week of holiday a year.
Most women didn鈥檛 go out to work, but they were encouraged to do men鈥檚 jobs whilst the men were elsewhere.
Bread, milk and coal would be delivered by horse and cart. They were favoured by salesmen, as the horses would move down the road so there were a lot of horses about. The old joke was you could only have a funeral in the after noon, because the horses would deliver the milk in the morning!
Most boys had jobs, to earn money; a gardening job was the favourite. You would find a big house, from like the age of 10, get paid for the gardening and make the shed your own!
We had hard winters, with the snow piling up on the roof, but we also had good summers. There was practically no traffic so you could play football in the street.
Boys and girls were split apart at school, no mixed schools, and boys wouldn鈥檛 talk to girls.
School visits were knocked on the head, and when you came back you normally had to write an essay on it!
A lot of wood was cut up for fires.You didn鈥檛 see dead trees; if there was a dead tree it would be cut down straight away! It wasn鈥檛 a throw-away country, nothing was rubbish; if you bought a stove it would last your whole life. A window was put into a house when it was built, and it would stay there until it was knocked down. Very few telephones were about and what are taken as granted today were considered a luxury in those days. Everything was done by letter, and there would be 3 or 4 deliveries each day, and everyone would communicate by postcard; so if I was going to see someone I would write a postcard to them so the next day when I am going they would get the card.
Older boys got the rule and corporal punishment was an issue, if you got caned at school and complained about it at home you would probably get it again at home.
Most clothes were hand-me-downs, and not thrown out, they wouldn鈥檛 be thrown away until they were worn out and then they would be used as cleaning rags.
The hours we worked were quite long; a forty eight hour working week was quite regular. Everyone was fairly religious in those days, and everyone went to church. Sunday was considered quite special, you wouldn鈥檛 hang laundry out on the Sabbath day, and dress up better than usual as well, we tried to continue this through wartime as much as possible.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.