Topic: Memorys of wartime rationing.....any one?

[jimtheworzel]

i was a bit young....born 1940 but i do remember the sweet rationing   ;D

[saddad]

I didn't come along until 1961... but Betty my allotment neighbour is 95 this time (1917) if you want anything specific...  :-\

[grannyjanny]

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.

[davyw1]

I can remember the sweet rationing but i think my most vivid memory was the brass buttons on my duvet cover.

[Grandma]

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!

[artichoke]

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.

[Borlotti]

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.

[lorna]

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!!!

[tricia]

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

[qahtan]

 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

[Mr Smith]

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, :)

[lavenderlux]

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.

[laurieuk]

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.

[Deb P]

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

[grawrc]

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.

[green lily]

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.  :(

[bridgehouse]

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.

[Trevor_D]

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!

[Jeannine]

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

[SamLouise]

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.