[Vwoolf] The Blitz Spirit (7)

[Stuart N. Clarke]

I remember:

(1) When butter came off the ration, I was given it for the first time, but I didn’t like it, since I had only been used to margarine (with a hard g).  I’m not that keen on any 
lactic products, even now.

(2) One winter’s evening we were sitting round the kitchen table by candlelight (another power cut), when my father appeared clutching “red pepper” in newspaper.  Presumably, pepper was hard to get.  I doubt if the cayenne was a success.

(3) My parents went to Blackpool for a holiday in 1946 or 7.  When they were in the guesthouse, there was a loud knock on the front door.  The landlady ushered my parents into a room, and said Keep quiet; you’ll be all right.  It was the police looking for black-market goods.  I only learnt the other month that Blackpool was a hotspot for the black market.

Stuart

From: Jeremy Hawthorn via Vwoolf 
Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2020 10:48 AM
To: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu 
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] The Blitz Spirit (7)

Bananas really were like gold dust in the UK in WW2. A family story has my father coming home from work (he was drafted, but worked in London) with a single banana, some time in "the duration." It will have cost him a bit as it probably "fell off the back of a truck." I was born May 1942, so cannot have been more that three at the time. The banana was peeled, then sliced into four, with a part each for my mother, my father, my brother and me. When my part was put in my mouth I spat it out. I have never liked bananas. To their dying days, my parents never allowed me to forget this, and suggested that there might have been something symbolic about the event.

Jeremy H



On 24.12.2020 09:59, Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf wrote:

  “The supermarket chain Sainsbury's said that if the travel restrictions continued there could be some food shortages, including of salad leaves and citrus fruit.” (BBC)


  From Alan Bennett’s “A Private Function” (set in 1947):

  PC PENNY: Mrs Metcalf?
  MRS METCALF: What love?
  PC PENNY: Are you wanting that banana?
  MRS METCALF: (Apologetically) I am, love, I’m planning a trifle.


  Stuart
  (Day 282)




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