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Post by jimmy2020 on Jul 23, 2020 14:04:26 GMT
I do remember visiting a "Rich Unc;e" (because He owned his own house) having Chicken in their Sunday Dinner when it was NOT Christmas, whilst We had Roast (or cold) meat. When did Chicken become the cheapest meat? When hatching eggs and producing chicken meat became a profitable production Mt brother and me were evacuated out of London during the war to rural Northamptonshire where farm produce was plentiful but alcohol and tobacco was not My enterprising father sat a chicken on some eggs and they all hatched, great news except they were all cocks so to rear them he had to keep the all apart. I remember sitting on a huge box at the railway station stuffed with dead dressed chickens which he traded for booze and fags. I suppose in his way he was a black marketeer
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Post by althea on Jul 25, 2020 15:16:44 GMT
The girl who lived next door to nan was a year older than I was,and I was allowed out to play with her when I got to four years old.
It was wonderful to have a little friend and her name was Vera.
We would play mud pies in the little postage stamp sized garden.
I would come in with not a mark on me.
My mother would marvel, that I did exactly the same as Vera,but she would go home muddy and I would be spotless.
Now when I've been gardening, I come in very dirty indeed,so things do change.
Vera's cousins came to stay at her house and they came out to play.
This was my first experience of religious prejudice ,though I was too young to understand at the time.
When i went to play with Vera, her cousins, a boy and a girl, asked me what I was.
I told them I was a girl.
This brought a sneer from the boy.
"No" he shouted."What are yer? Are yer a catlick or a proddy?"
I had to admit I didn't know.
"Oh," he said shrewdly, "that means you're a proddy. If you was a catlick you'd know."
So then I couldn't play with them.
I went home upset and asked my mother what a catlick was.
Mother told me I wasn't to bother about it.
Nan had a Singer sewing machine that had two draws in the table underneath it. These drawers were full of odds and ends and one of my favourite things was rooting in them.
I would find things and ask nan if I could have them. Usually she said yes,bless her.
One day I spotted a something that looked like a little golden colour sweet, so I popped it in my mouth. I quickly spat it out. It was a Haliborange oil capsule. Ugh! I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth for days.
We had sweet coupons each week to go towards buying sweets.
As nan was diabetic and granda didn't eat sweets, they both gave me their coupons.
Once a week nan would take me to Bairds corner shop for a quarter of "good sweets"
I was never allowed penny chews or blackjacks, it was chocolate caramels for me.
Caramels being quite large, you didn't get many in a quarter.
The bag of sweets was put in the cabinet in the parlour and when I wanted a sweet, I would ask nan and we would go into the parlour where I was given a sweet.
This ceremony would take place once a day.
When I was four, my mother gave birth to my sister, Jane Miriam.
She became known as Millie, then later shortened to Mil.
Poor little Mil didn't thrive as I had and was constantly crying.
It didn't have much effect on me ,but was very trying for my mother.
We found out later that Mil had an intolerance to dairy and especially cow's milk. It had been giving her colic.
As I now have the same thing, I can truly sympathise with her suffering.
I was more interested in my dolls than my sister and had gathered quite a collection.
nan used to make them all clothes. One time nan made lovely blue striped pyjamas for all my dolls out of my uncle Brian's old ones. When he came home on leave he was not happy, but my dolls looked splendid all lined up in their blue pyjamas.
On wash day nan would wash my dolls clothes along with everything else.
I can picture my granda now, in the yard, mangling my dolly clothes.
There was a song on the radio called "Pedro the fisherman" and I loved that song.
Nan bought a doll and knitted it a fisherman's cap a Guernsey sweater and trousers and we called him Pedro.He was my favourite for a time.
My real long term favourite doll was Angela.
She was very pretty and had a slightly open mouth.
I used to "feed" Angela with saccharine tablets, because she was "poorly".
Angela developed a rattle.
Then I discovered I could squeeze other food into Angela's mouth and sadly one day she fell apart because the stuff inside her rotted the elastic bands that held her together.
My father bought me a tortoise for a pet and they named him Tommy.
For some reason, I could never say it right, it came out as "Tomony".
So he became Tomony.
Nan and I used to go on the waste ground and pick Dandelion leaves for him, he really loved them. We kept him in the house, which I suppose was cruel really, but I was totally fascinated by him and couldn't bear to let him out of my sight.
Besides, we only had a yard at the back, and the front garden wasn't secure.
We put him in a box in the shed to hibernate and I think he died.
I didn't see him again, but no one mentioned him and I didn't like to ask.
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Post by ARENA on Jul 25, 2020 16:07:25 GMT
Great thread , I shall contribute soon.
BTW My name at primary school ,for a while, was Pedro, as I used to whistle Pedro the Fisherman incessantly .Must have driven my Mum scatty!
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Post by goodlookingone on Jul 25, 2020 18:02:47 GMT
Thanks, althea.
An enjoyable interlude, but Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
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Post by jimmy2020 on Jul 25, 2020 19:40:43 GMT
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Post by jimmy2020 on Jul 25, 2020 19:43:30 GMT
How we rationed our sweets out during rationing, and afterwards too These days you see children in supermarkets munching a bag full which they've finished by the time they get to the checkouts
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Post by aubrey on Jul 26, 2020 7:49:13 GMT
Kids these days, they don't know they're born.
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Post by althea on Jul 26, 2020 10:07:17 GMT
That was a catchy tune, thanks for finding it,jimmy. I wouldn't swap my childhood for a childhood today - even though they have so much material stuff. We had close family ties and make do and mend. We had to save up to buy something we wanted and then we enjoyed it all the more.
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Post by ARENA on Jul 27, 2020 8:44:32 GMT
April 2nd 1940 Dame Penelope Anne Constance Keith, DBE, DL was born. At the same time a little lad was also born, not in Sutton, but way up north in Aberdeen. She and I had no idea what a chaotic world we had just entered.
Nine months later my father was conscripted. I was not to know him until June 1945.
Aberdeen was nicknamed "Siren City" during WW2 after a terrible raid in the Spring of 1943 in which 130 bombs were dropped by the Luftwaffe in one hour. One of Mr Hitler's successes was a direct hit on our house. Mother scooped me from my bed and fled down the corridor and in the dark fell down the bomb-hole. She was in a steel corset for the rest of her life. With the aid of a spinster sister she re-located to the home I was brought up in.
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Post by jimmy2020 on Jul 27, 2020 9:49:40 GMT
April 2nd 1940 Dame Penelope Anne Constance Keith, DBE, DL was born. At the same time a little lad was also born, not in Sutton, but way up north in Aberdeen. She and I had no idea what a chaotic world we had just entered. Nine months later my father was conscripted. I was not to know him until June 1945. Aberdeen was nicknamed "Siren City" during WW2 after a terrible raid in the Spring of 1943 in which 130 bombs were dropped by the Luftwaffe in one hour. One of Mr Hitler's successes was a direct hit on our house. Mother scooped me from my bed and fled down the corridor and in the dark fell down the bomb-hole. She was in a steel corset for the rest of her life. With the aid of a spinster sister she re-located to the home I was brought up in. On April 17th 1940 another little boy was born in what as to become blitzed London. Parents stuck it out although older brother was evacuated to the wilds of Northants until a bomb dropped and demolished an adjoining block of flats and then another dropped on their block but failed to go off. Parents decided that was an omen and they too fled to Northants
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Post by althea on Jul 29, 2020 13:41:29 GMT
I am very lucky that I was born post war, after reading both of your accounts about being born in wartime. My cousin was born during the war and during a raid her mother wrapped her in the eiderdown and ran to the shelter. Halfway there ,my aunt realised that my cousin had slipped out of the eiderdown. My aunt ran back to find her in the nick of time.
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Post by ARENA on Jul 31, 2020 10:15:02 GMT
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Post by jimmy2020 on Jul 31, 2020 11:54:39 GMT
What was so important about Aberdeen that the Germans blitzed it ?
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Post by goodlookingone on Jul 31, 2020 13:08:21 GMT
What was so important about Aberdeen that the Germans blitzed it ? Isn't it a Port?
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Post by ARENA on Jul 31, 2020 14:20:57 GMT
What was so important about Aberdeen that the Germans blitzed it ? Isn't it a Port? It is the largest natural harbour in Europe.Aberdeen Harbour was established in 1136 by King David I of Scotland. According to the Guinness Book of Business Records, it is the oldest existing business in Britain, with a history that has spanned almost 900 years.
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