|
Granddad used to
round off his meal with a cigar, and sometimes cheese with strawberry jam. Some evenings we were entertained by a magic lantern
show. This consisted of a projector that shone a light through coloured glass
slides to show pretty patterns on a screen. Sounds pretty primitive but that was
the technology available at the end of the war.
In the back yard of the house was the family bomb shelter but as it was near the
end of the war there was no call to use it. The shelter became a playhouse for
us kids. Nearby, in the vacant ground bounded by Old High Street, New Road,
Sherfield Road and Argent Street, there was the community air raid shelter. This
was a labyrinth of underground concrete tunnels. After the war this too became a
playing area for us. Hundreds of metres of dark tunnels to play in. they were
kept locked of course but they couldn't keep us out. Unfortunately they were
also a hang out for derelicts and eventually when they were no longer required,
the council smashed them up and filled them in. that common ground was also the
location for the community bonfire on Guy Fawkes night.
As the war drew to a close things were starting cheer up. The bombing had ceased
and there were no more air raid sirens. A captured “doodlebug” (flying bomb) was
on display at the fire station and I got a close look at it. It didn’t seem
dangerous, just like a small plane. The market was open again and all the barrow
boys and stallholders were trading again. There were not a lot of goods around
at the time, mainly recycled materials, but the atmosphere was there. As you
entered the market there was a food stall, fish and chips, sandwiches etc. a
sort of café de wheels. Bill's stall it was called. A favourite with us kids was
a three penny bag of chips and vinegar, splendid stuff. The vinegar would collect
in the bottom of the bag and we would chew the corner off and drink the vinegar
through the paper. If we didn’t have threepence we would ask Bill for a penny
slice of bread and jam. Bill would saw off a thick slice, (fresh crusty bread
not the doughy sliced stuff that was just appearing then and has now become
accepted as bread) spread it with butter and a generous topping of jam. What a
delightful treat that was. A lot of dad’s friends were market people and at one
time he even had a fairy floss machine there himself. The air force would be
there with a bomb on display, upon which you could stick a stamp that you had
purchased, thereby supporting the war effort.
When the war ended the first noticeable change was that things suddenly got
brighter. Windows were no longer boarded up or painted over. Shop fronts and
signs were repainted, and something I had never seen before, neon lights,
appeared making the evening street scene look like a fairytale. Ice cream soon
became available, although sweets, as were many other things were rationed and
remained rationed till we came to Australia in 1951. Dad had told us of the
wonders of ice cream and it was a memorable occasion when I first tried it, (I
had a twopenny wafer), and I’ve had a liking for it ever since. With rationing,
a ration book was issued for each member of the family and my mother kept these.
The allowance for sweets (lollies in Australia) was I think 2 ounces per week.
About one Mars bar or a small portion of assorted sweets. To make the ration
last it was common to buy “gobstoppers” large sweet balls that you could suck
for hours and were made of multi coloured layers. Of course you had to take it
out of your mouth every so often to see the colour change. One of the shops on
the way to school used to sell penny bags of “sweet crumbs”; these were just the
small sugary fragments that collected at the bottom of their bulk sweet jars.
Waste not want not was the slogan of the day. Nothing was wasted.
|
