i was a bit young....born 1940 but i do remember the sweet rationing ;D
I didn't come along until 1961... but Betty my allotment neighbour is 95 this time (1917) if you want anything specific... :-\
Our daughter & SiL love 'old' things, they renovate furniture. They were at the local market recently & there were some ration books on the book stall, they bought one & it had belonged to my best friends auntie. It certainly brought back memories to my OH who was in 1943.
I can remember the sweet rationing but i think my most vivid memory was the brass buttons on my duvet cover.
Quote from: davyw1 on January 31, 2012, 14:37:44
I can remember the sweet rationing but i think my most vivid memory was the brass buttons on my duvet cover.
Funny you should mention that,davyw1 as I was talking to my 97 year old Dad about rationing just this weekend. Clothing was also rationed and he remembers my mum asking him to get her a plain blanket so that she could make herself a winter coat. I bet she'd have loved to have had your brass buttons!
I was born in 1943 and am told that I would be fed with the weekly egg and it broke their hearts to watch me spitting it out and wasting it. Also heard tales of bitter battles between two sailors on leave, my father and my mother's brother, over bars of chocolate that they would pinch from each other in spite of excellent hiding places.
I used to have a tiny little dress my mother made for me from parachute silk beautifully embroidered, but cannot find it these days. If I threw it out, I am mad - it was a lovely souvenir of beauty produced in difficult times.
One thing I still have is her diary of the years around the difficult winter of ? '47 - not wartime, but there were regular powercuts, rationed fuel for heating, and many other problems faced with energy and optimism.
I also was born in 1943, can remember playing with ration books, loved the different colours at the side of the books. Got told off for playing with the black out curtains, as thought it was funny (must have been very young, but had never been told off like that before). I love corned beef, and couldn't eat butter or cream for years, and loved magarine.
Spent most of the war evacuated but I remember the rationing (born 1934). There were 9 children and I remember one of the older sisters bringing home her boy friend. (lovely guy who she later married) She put 3 spoonful's of sugar in his cup of tea. She then received a lecture from my dad!!!
Born in 1934 I have memories dating from the first day of the war on 3rd September 1939. We children were blackberrying and heard the first siren. A man and his son told us to go home quickly. We lived out in the sticks and a despatch rider had just arrived to inform us that war had been declared. We only had an accummulator radio - no electricity!
As for the rationing - it was pretty grim. We had a small garden which was entirely given over to veggie growing. My Dad incubated chicken eggs in the boiler cupboard in 1940 so we always had chickens from then on - though we had to give up some of the eggs! We could have bread with jam or marge - but not both and it was deemed a crime to throw away stale bread. I remember finding a tin of condensed milk hidden at the back of the larder. We made a hole in the top and my siblings and I gradually ate the lot by sticking our fingers in the hole and licking them. Oh - that sweetness! It was worth the hidings we got when the empty tin was eventually discovered!
My Dad had a greengrocer's shop so we did quite well on the fruit side. Any rare delivery of oranges was special because the cut off good bits of half rotten ones were brought home for us to suck on. There were, of course, no bananas. My younger sister's face on being offered one after the war was a picture. She didn't want to know!
I seem to remember most of our meals being in the form of one pot stews. Once in a while there was a rice pudding or rock cakes made with dried egg. Unfortunately, my mother wasn't a very inventive cook.
At school the food was really bad - whale meat tasted like rubber and smelt disgusting!. Horse meat was almost as bad. We filled up on suet pudding with dried egg custard or sometimes really stodgy bread pudding.
But rationing didn't end with the end of the war. I remember being able to buy an all wool blanket without coupons which cost me £2.10s. in 1951 (I still have it!!) and when I became pregnant in 1953 I had a special extra ration book for the baby!
A different world!
Tricia
yes I too was born in 1934 in London. being evavuated to Devonshire, came home for Chistmas 1942 as my Dad was going to be home,,, he was done his bit in the first world war so was working up in the north of England, he was in Coldstream Guards for nearly 20 years, started when he was one of the old Contemptables, yes it is all quite clear, coming home, Dad died in February "43, and we were bombed out 2 weeks later in "43.
One can go on and on about these times, they were rough but we got through. qahtan
Born after WW2 but I can remember being sent on errands to the CO-OP with the ration book, and having Cod liver oil and Orange juice at School, :)
I think rationing for sweets and margarine went on until 1952. I had become so used to the labelled 'special' margarine that when butter became available, I didn't like it.
We didn't go short of meat, as my father and grandfather both kept chickens and rabbits; at times also they had a pig which was fattened up but we were only allowed part of the meat back but my grandmother made the most wonderful 'pork cheeses' from all the bits. Living in the country there was always plenty of vegetables and fruit, especially plums, which my grandmother bottled in Kilner jars.
I was born in 1931 so can remember the rationing quite well. I think in some ways it did good, we used to have a washed carrot instead of sweets.So there was less teeth problems, how things change though, we are often told now that too much cheese is not good for you but then farm workers got a months cheese allowance each week as it was than GOOD for them. After the war when bananas were still very scarce children and expectant mums had grey couipons to egt them with and I worked Saturdays for a greengrocer often bananas would appear from under the counter for CERTAIN customers. We had points for tinned products.
My mum still tells the tale that she was so excited in the early fifties when her local shop had some oranges in stock she ran home to tell her mum then realised she had left her baby sister in her pram outside the shop! She was still there when she got back though..... ;D
To be honest I think a bit of wartime rationing would do us all good!
Can't say I missed for much as a child (born 1949) although there was rationing until I went to school.
I remember going to the sweetie shop later in the fifties with sixpence (2.5p for you young uns) - gifted from my uncle on leave from Malaya - clutched in my hand. My eyes as round as the gobstoppers! Leaving with 2 or 3 little bags full of sweet delights as well as change to put in my savings.
My parents lived with me for the last 5 years of their lives. Mum died last Sept a month before her 100th birthday. I've made a memorial box for them both complete with a ration book and a photo of Dad as a spitfire pilot. He was one of the few who survived because he was an instructor to the Polish flyers.. I am a 1939 babe and can remember the power I felt on being able to go into a shop and buy 2oz of wool without needing coupons! I made a tea cosy I must have been about 12/13..... ;D
One of the most permanent memories is the fear that a siren still has for me. It still turns my stomach 70 years on. :(
The sound of the air raid siren still makes my stomach turn .our house in the war years seemed to always be crowded with dad, and uncles in uniform ,RAF and NAVY, my dads brother was in the Navy on Battle Cruisers be was also torpedoed when he was on HMS Baram, he survived unlike some of his friends, I think he was torpedoed twice, but I do not know anything about the second one he was a gunner on boared ship until the end of the war ,I was born in1935 and i remember rationing so well, not many new clothes for us and it was make do and mend then
we used to grow veg's in the back garden, and I remember my mother and the other people in our croft being so angry, when the local farmers cows got into the garden and eat the lot.
June.
A siren turns my stomach, too. Green lily, you must have lived near Northolt airport, just along the road from me at Greenford. That's where the Polish pilots operated from, and there's a war memorial to them on the A40.
My dad kept chickens, too, so we weren't short of eggs. I remember painting them with waterglass and storing them in solution in a bucket to last us through the winter period. (Hands up all you youngsters who didn't realise that eggs are seasonal!) We sold the chickens in the run-up to Christmas, and from a very early age I got involved in plucking them, and later on drawing them as well.
We had two allotments - that's how I got the interest - and plenty of fruit, so I don't really remember any lack of food. I do remember going shopping with Mum - I assume after the war - and getting to tear off the appropriate coupon. And when sweets came off the ration, we all went wild!
My Dad was an accountant in the war,he had poor health and couldn't join in.
He would travel all over to small businesses that he looked after and always managed to get a small bit of extra stuff here and there as a special thankyou, they then traded the extras with our neighbours, so an extra ounce of cheese would become a few eggs from a neighbours chickens or perhaps a bit of sugar would turn into a bag of home grown apples
My Mum looked after 4 old couples in the street who could no longer bake etc so she shared with them and others. I rememeber one story clearly. I had been ill and the Dr came, Mum asked if he thought I was getting enough nourishment , the Dr laughed as my Dad had just walked in with his stash..ended up Dad paid thr Dr with a chunk of cheese that day.
Black market, well probably but my Mum shared with everyone so it seemed to be the right thing to do.
They grew as much as they could, kept rabbits, chickens, ducks and an old goose who lived through the war without making it into the pot. I am told berry picking, mushroom picking,foraging etc was a regular day out and Mum had a friend who had a bee hive , the friend was a widower so Mum baked his bread,,and so it went on.
Jumble sales were quite the event, I remember them from after the war as I was too little during it.Doors opened and everyone ran..
I remember sweet coupons myself and remember bread still being rationed, I aslo remeber the first sliced bread loaf fastened with a rubber band.
I still remember some of the post war kitchen advice I learned from my mother . It was an awful time I am sure but I have often thought I would have liked to live through it as as an adult..the rationing part I mean.
Occasionally I still do a month of war time cooking, strictly according to the rationing code, it is quite a challengs but good to do.
I remember wearing parachute silk dresses, my VE day dress was one with the addition of red, white and blue ribbons.
Good to reflect.
XX Jeannine
So easy to become engrossed in this thread, it's just so interesting. I'm always fascinated by the stories of domestic life during war time (y'know, being such a youngster, born in the late 60s ;D :P ;D) I hope there are many more contributions.
I was born in 1938, so I have some good and bad memories of the war.
I do remember coming home from school one day to find a yellow curved thing on my plate, which my mother told me was a banana. The sight of it horrified me, and I refused to eat it. To the complete mortification of my mother who had queued for some considerable time to get it.
My reading of History tells me that it would have been 1944, the year that the Prime Minister insisted that shipping space be found to give every child in the UK a banana.
Well, it was wasted on me.
Peter
I sometimes this is was why my mum was such a terrible cook! My parents were born in 24 and 26 and so knew rationing quite well. My dad was in the Merchant navy and they went as far as Australia, where the men were fed typically 40s Aussie grub - steak for breakfast with bacon, eggs, toast etc!!! They had forgotten what that all tasted like! They were sorry to head off from there.
My parents had talked to us about rationing, and all the things you couldn't get, fresh eggs, lemons, oranges, meat.
My mum never learned to cook more modern food and we lived on (this was in the 70s!) stews, lamb chops, sausages, mince and she made puddings like rice pudding, bread pudding, cooked custard. Funny thing was, my granddad had an allotment so they must have had nicer food than that when she was growing up (he was a coal miner in Easington, Durham)!! I think my nan never taught her how to cook!
Iwas born 51 and don't remember rations, but my father who was to young for WWI and to old WW2, he worked at the railways in Glasgow, we all live in a tenement one room for a family of 6, a recess with a curtain across the bed were my Mam and Dad slept ,a sink and cooker, and mattress on the floor at night for the children, I sleep in a drawer,my oldest sister told me, someone reported DAD to the police! saying he had two jobs !he went out in evenings after finshing after his tea ,I don't know if you were only allowed one job? anyhow he'd catch pike,and share it with the nabours,and rabbits, and poutch trout, he could tickle them ;D He had a thing about bananas after ration he always bought a Hand of bananas I think the war left a lot o people with hoarding habits just in-case shops run out. think i would be the same.
This is a great thread - I'm 26, so never had these sorts of tales from my parents and all my grandparents were dead by the time I was 7 so never really got a chance to ask them questions. As an adult I am so interested in history now and wish I had asked more questions when I was young.
The only thing I do remember is my Gran telling me how they had one lot of about 4 linen cloths for wrapping dumplings in. She used to make them all the time when I was little (very unhealthy but very yummy) - the type with the meat inside. She explained that all the wives used to share the cloths and you weren't allowed to have them for more that a day otherwise you just had to pass them on without having made your dumplings.
Of course when I was eating them as a child they were very different from what she used to put inside them during the war. Lucky me huh! ;D
on bin day we kids would rumage in the bins looking for empty pop bottles to take back to the shop and get the bottle deposit of 2p to buy sweets
happy days
Who remembers WAD?
We were paid a penny or two for collecting rose hips. I found that very exciting, not having any pocket money.
My father was an unusual man who made all our bread (flour, salt, yeast, water.....of course) throughout my conscious childhood. I was born in 1943, followed by 3 sisters.
Italians and Poles fled to our town in East Fife bringing their own traditional foods. I remember fantastic potato salads and breads.
Both my parents, after meeting at Cambridge and later at Bletchley Park during the war, went to Spain in the 50s and mingled with Franco's family, as did I when I was 12. Teaching their children English.
I find it quite surreal that as a young child I collected rosehips for pennies in Scotland, but stayed with Franco's brother-in-law eating quails and melons (MELONS!) in Spain a decade later.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2000/jul/20/guardianobituaries2
A very interesting read... and life.
My mother was fond of telling me that my grandparents kept rabbits throughout the war for food and fed them on onion tops for part of the year. Apparently the flavour was exquisite.
Quote from: petefj on February 02, 2012, 07:52:05
My reading of History tells me that it would have been 1944, the year that the Prime Minister insisted that shipping space be found to give every child in the UK a banana.
Well, it was wasted on me.
Peter
How long before you gave in and tried one? :)
In remember with great fondness the orange juice concentrate that was given out to babies,we didn't qualify but a neighbours baby did but wouldn't drink it so Mum traded something for it for me. When I got the chance I would sip it neat!! Here I can buy frozen OJ concentrate(never found it in the UK) and whenever I mix it I still have to have a wee bit undiluted as that memory is so strong.
Oh and the horrors of ABIDEX drops..vitamin drops that were supposed to be added to kids food, oh they were incredibly awful, my Mum valiantly tried to hide them in things but I always knew, I can still smell them as strong as yesterday. In fact a common curse for me is stating that something smells as bad as ABIDEX drops.
I tried to buy rabbit today but refused to pay $35 for a frozen one.
You have all triggered my need to cook wartime again..I think next weeks Sunday dinner may be ............
Lord Wolton Pie with gravy,potato floddies and parsnip croquettes or wartime champ followed by Victory pudding with custard or mock apricot flan with mock cream.. anyone want to join me?
XX Jeannine
I certainly had welfare orange juice. I do not think it did my teeth any good at all.
I used to buy frozen orange juice in small round tubs when we were first married. I always liked it because there is no waste.
And I also remember malt and cod liver oil.
And I remember the day we roasted the war time chickens they were as tough as old boots and had to be made into soup in the pressure cooker.
Thanks for posting the story artichoke very interesting life. Have you thought of writing a book?
I can remember going to renew the ration books with my Mum, & yes her hoarding habits have passed on to me which is why I feel very patronised when the powers that be start going on about food parcels for the elderly after a couple of days cold weather - I think they would find that most elderly people keep a very good store cupboard & can when pushed make a hot meal out of next to nothing without turning a hair.
Please do not tell anyone but we used to creep round the back of the off licence to get bottles to take in the front and get the pennies. :-X :-X
Quote from: jimtheworzel on February 02, 2012, 17:09:55
on bin day we kids would rumage in the bins looking for empty pop bottles to take back to the shop and get the bottle deposit of 2p to buy sweets
happy days
Re the hoarding thing, my Mumm was a huge food hoarder and I have certainly inherited the talent..I call it a talent because if well managed it saves a great deal of money, time etc. so I am quite happy with that. Even though there is now only two of us we still buy in bulk, wholesale where we can and always "put up" food by canning(bottling). I can't imagine running a house any other way really.
Mum used to make all kinds of soup, one was made with anything she had at the time, when we asked what type of soup were this one was she would answer..don't ask.. there is a war on. I still make "There's a War on Soup" to this day.
XX Jeannine
don't ask.. there is a war on. I still make "There's a War on Soup" to this day.
;D Thats bit like when I make soup..OH always asks whats in it...and my answer is "check what's not in cupboard".. ;D
bump ing this up.
Quote from: laurieuk on February 03, 2012, 11:34:27
Please do not tell anyone but we used to creep round the back of the off licence to get bottles to take in the front and get the pennies. :-X :-X
Quote from: jimtheworzel on February 02, 2012, 17:09:55
on bin day we kids would rumage in the bins looking for empty pop bottles to take back to the shop and get the bottle deposit of 2p to buy sweets
happy days
:o :o :o at Laurie!
Quote from: laurieuk on February 03, 2012, 11:34:27
Please do not tell anyone but we used to creep round the back of the off licence to get bottles to take in the front and get the pennies. :-X :-X
[quote
done it but got caught
Oh Laurie you were not on your own, I used to climb the big iron gate at the back of the Maypole pub, and have a few empties, did you sneak into the pictures to ,I did. we had no pocket money in those days because my dad was in the RAF, and my mother had no spare cash. all in all my childhood was happy we were left to our own devices to run through the fields, and play in the brook, but at the back of it all I knew things were serious, and some bombs did fall where I lived, and Birmingham took a bashing it, was only about five miles from my home.Did anyone taste whale meat [called snook] oh my goodness it was awful, we only had it once
June.
One thing that youngsters [ and even doctors can hardly believe] is that just after the war when the hospitals were so full of wounded, my brother and I had our adenoids and tonsils removed on the dining room table.
I can still remember the white mask going over my face....I guess 2 GPs used to pair up to do it... We both survived fine. But we lived in Ilford home of May and Bakers and were part of their first M+B tablets research for sore throats. Guess that must have been about 46/7
I also remember having my tonsils and adenoids out in the local cottage hospital in 1951. We were two to a bed. One at the top and other at the bottom. So many children (baby boomers) the waiting lists must have been enormous. This is one of my earliest memories at aged 4. I remember coming home the same day and my Uncle having made me a snow sledge for me because I had been a 'good girl'. I was too ill to even look at it, throat was so sore despite the ice cream and jelly.
When we moved to East Fife, first:
I was taught to read.....(I could already, but I didn't understand what the teacher was telling me to do so I was a bit sad)....then I got pneumonia and lost a few weeks and was totally bewildered.
May and Bakers was exactly what I had.......maybe around 1948? The most disgusting taste in the world, but I had to swallow it for about 4 years because I was always ill, and that was the medicine. Brown. M&B to me meant Brown Medicine.