Stretching Things a Bit

Part 12.

There were always shortages of something or other in the Second World War; people would queue for almost anything from saccharin’s to knickers elastic this being due to rubber being needed for tyres and war machines. Knicker elastic was a thing that was highly prized by our women folk in those war years, when stores would get it in it was rationed to two yards per person and was a vital part of the countries defences. I remember on a couple of occasions young women coming to grief because of this most vital commodity, usually a safety pin was all that kept disaster at bay. One time while we were sitting in a bus in Bishop Auckland’s market square, this young woman’s worst nightmare happened in front for all to see; as she ran for the bus something snapped. My aunt who was a pretty young woman herself ran off the bus to help, unfortunately this just made things worse and attracted more attention than necessary, in the end this young girl got on the bus in tears and much to the men’s amusement. There was another time when this other young woman did almost the same, except she was more agile by reaching down in mid stride and scooping them up into her hand bag without a bat of the eyelid. This sort of thing was going on all over the country by reports from other people; it just goes to show this countries defences were stretched to breaking point.In the shops and furniture stores things would have a utility sign on them this was like two pie charts with a number 4 in the middle, things were not to well made mainly due to shortages; what I mean is there were no frills or good design features. My mother was looking at some furniture in one shop when she opened a draw it was only cardboard in the bottom, which wouldn’t have been able to hold anything without it falling through.Cigarettes were always scarce especially the favourite brands like Woodbines , Capstan and Players, shops would keep them for their regular costumers. The Black-market was a thriving business during the war and everyone made use of it if they could, there were the typical Spivs just like Walker on Dad‘s Army who could seem to get anything within reason. That brings me to our local Dad’s Army often when out usually at weekends we would run into them doing their exercises, it wasn’t much different to the television series and you could almost see the same characters. We would be told to clear off by the local Captain Mainwaring and his bunch of desperados; these were also local shopkeepers of the village and others from the brickworks.Some times the local church hall would have a magic lantern show, something like Uncle Tom’s Cabin or some biblical theme all the kids would pile in just for somewhere to go. Other times they would put a pantomime like Aladdin or some such thing, at Christmas time there would be a nativity play.