A Boys World And Home Cooking

Part 11.

In this new home near Bishop Auckland where I lived during the war, this village carried on with the things it did pretty much the same as it did before hostilities; it was a sleepy little place where everyone new each other. The village in the past had been a place of drift mines and brick works, strange how this industry seemed almost swallowed up with all the greenery; it wasn’t neat and tidy but it was unobtrusive. The brick works were behind our cottages and just continued making bricks, even in wartime bricks are needed. The drift mines had been re-opened because they needed the coal for the war effort, the pit ponies were housed in this old building at the end of our little street of houses; we kids used to meet them on the way back from the mine and help bed them down.In the undergrowth almost hidden by greenery was the remains of an old charcoal burning industry, it looked like some lost civilisation that had been swallowed up by the jungle of grass and trees; these kilns were dome shaped like Eskimos igloos. We would excavate these and make them into dens where we would roast potatoes in a fire, melt led to make lead shapes in the sand moulds we would fashion. This together with the river nearby and all the woodlands would by the setting for a boys adventure playground, if we weren’t fishing in the river for minnows and sticklebacks; we would be building rafts from the pit props that were in piles near by.I would come home from school I think it would be Tuesday, and my Nana would be ironing on the living room table with the radio playing; Victor Sylvester would be playing his requests in the background. I rather liked this radio program together with the pleasant atmosphere of that warm dry ironing feeling, remember the irons were heated on the open fire there was a little stand for them to heat up; there was also a stand for the kettle but usually the kettle just rested on the coals. Nana always seemed happy while she was doing this and listening to the radio, other music on the radio would be typical things like you would hear now about the war; Vera Lynn and all those war time favourites also Glen Miller and other American bands. I have never gotten those wartime songs out of my system, that was my era and when I hear them now they bring back pleasant memories. Strange as it may sound the three years I spent in that village would turn out to be the happiest time that I can remember, after my earlier start in life being so miserable and poverty stricken. However it was not to last when the war finally came to an end and those equally as hard and austere times came back, but for the time being we could all at least find a little happiness.At weekends that is on a Sunday we would have our Sunday dinner but I am not quite sure now if it was every Sunday, we would fare a little better than some folks that had less ration books than we; I believe the meat ration could be saved up so you could have one good dinner every so often. However come Sunday there was always home cooking we’d have apple tarts, bilberry tarts, jam tarts, and ham and egg tart, there was only one egg and a few thin rashers of bacon in the tart though.