Don't you know there's a war on

Part 4
At the time that we lived in this little mining village it turned me into a country loving person I have never been settled in the town since, I know that this is the opposite for some people but I believe that your mind is shaped and set at an early age, that’s what makes us what we are.
One of the pleasures was going into Bishop Auckland on a Saturday by bus; it used to run every two hours from where we lived, if I was with my school friends we would either go to the Cinema or Theatre to watch live acts. Other times I would be with the family whilst they did the shopping there, if there was a queue you’d always ask what they were queuing for, some people that were standing in the queue didn’t know but they were standing there anyway. As I mentioned earlier we would look for a meal somewhere, I remember the co-op restaurant served a standard meal of one fat red sausage with mashed potato and gravy; I quite liked the sausage in spite of its strange colour. Another time we would go to a pie peas a potato cafes which was rather oldie worldie, there was quite a lot of old buildings like that in Bishop Auckland; but now have sadly vanished. The old bus that took us there was just about clapped out as it chugged and strained up the hills, after all as the saying went at that time; “Don’t You Know There’s A War On”. My Grandmother was a rather old fashioned and used to take charge of the family, her two daughters although married had to obey her command together with us children. Sometimes if I was not behaving as she thought I should in other Peoples Company she would fix me with this glaring hypnotic stare which made me hang my head. However she was my Nana and I loved her more than my mother I think, she would look after my cousin and me while they were at work in the munitions factory in Spennymoor. My mother and aunt used to make shell cases for small arms and a canon, which wasn’t a bad job, compared to another factory nearby which made explosives and was always blowing up; supposedly from sabotage. In the summertime we would walk to Bishop Auckland on a nice summer evening, it was nice country scenery along the meandering back road, so peaceful and serene with the birds singing in the hedgerows; sometimes you wouldn’t know there was a war on.

Learning to put up with war

Before my two brothers were evacuated my father had come back from Dunkirk, I think it was after that he spent some time in Iraq before going to North Africa where he was captured by the Germans but handed over to the Italians. First he was reported missing which was a terrible shock to my mother and family, that was the 21st of June 1942, later the 15th of august he was reported captured.
At this time my mother aunt, grandmother, cousin and myself were in a little mining village in Co Durham, things started to get a little better to what I had been used to previously. Things were rationed but in truth the merger rations were better than what we had been used to, and because there was five ration books; thing went a little further than say someone living on their own,
People learned to adjust for shortages because we had not had it so good in the past, I think people today would certainly find it harder if it ever came to that again. This mining village being in the country and on the river with lots of woods was the ideal playground for a boy; although it was wartime it was a happier time than when I lived in the town with all the poverty that we had to suffer. We used to go back occasionally to check on grandmother’s house which she kept up in the town, we often got caught up in air raids from time to time.
I remember standing in queues quite a lot for various things that were in short supply; it was amazing how people managed to make things go so far.
Eggs were in short supply some weeks there would be one to a book that’s a ration book, some weeks none and some just on children’s books, things were scarce and people had to make do and mend, clothes were rationed. The food ministry was always giving out recipes; it was something like how to make something from almost nothing, everyone when visiting the local town would be looking for cafes and restaurants to help supplement their diet. Here in the North of England before the war there was pies peas and potatoes eating places set up to help out of work people get a cheap meal., these place caught on I still remember them with a great deal of fondness.
What I remember during the war was the advertisements and propaganda we used to get on the radio cinema and newspapers, no television in those days. Potato Pete used to be one of my favourites he was a potato head with trousers telling everyone to eat more potato’s, didn’t need much telling we’d eat anything then.
Another character was the squander bug covered in swastikas telling people not to waste anything. Later when the Americans came into the war we were introduced to “Spam and dried Egg”. The dried egg came in tins but we always got it in waxed paper cartons, I used to love this you do all kinds of things with it; mixed with milk you could fry it scramble it and bake with it.

Thinking Back

Part 2
Going back to my time before the war when I was just a small child, we lived in a two roomed downstairs flat with a gas light, I remember my mother sending me to buy a gas mantle from the corner shop across the road; the mantle was a china clay like mesh cover they used to burn out and disintegrate. These mantles were two or three pence, when they were new they burned with a clean light, but then got more yellowed as they aged, we also had a gas ring to boil the kettle on this used to rest on the floor. However most of the cooking was done on the coal fire and oven as we couldn’t afford the penny for the meter sometimes. The home made bread used to smell and taste really good, the most baked kind of bread was called stotty cake; this was pronounced stotty k-yeck a Geordie favourite. It seems to be dying out now as it doesn’t bake so well in modern ovens, the other name for it was oven bottoms.
On occasions when my mother could afford some meat we would have pie crust, this was made in a square roast tin with mostly black pudding stewing steak, onions and gravy with a cup in the middle to support the sheet of pastry laid on top. This was more of a rare occasion as I’ve said before we never had much in those days, I remember being covered in scabs as were other kids at that time; it was usually down to malnutrition a lack of vitamins; a lot of children suffered from it then.
At that time OXO’s used to come in a tiny individual box and cost one penny each, that mixed with hot water and a slice of bread was a meal for us hungry kids. Another thing was at times you could get a pile of broken kippers for coppers really, it didn’t matter they tasted the same as whole ones.
When the war started and my father went off to his regiment, we some times used to go to the Cinema with my mother she was a bit better off financially with my father being in the army. Sometimes we would have to come out in the middle of the picture because of an air raid, and rush to this underground shelter, it was staffed with nurses policemen and air raid wardens. I remember being cradled in the arms of these two nurses who were taking turns nursing me; I was always a bit of a sleepy-head and could fall asleep on the cold lino floor.
One night we were called out of the cinema because this Barrage balloon had been hanging limp all day, I think it must have been holed in the air raid the night before; they couldn’t reel it in and was lying across the houses.
It eventually came down over the doorway of this pub and looked just like a big silver elephant, they always reminded me of elephants when they were moored around the town.

How It Was

Part 1
Looking about me and seeing the lifestyle that people seem to enjoy today, even though the vast majority have rarely known hardship or what it is to be poor and hungry. I often think how modern day folk would cope if their lifestyle was suddenly to change for the worse. Some people, if not a sizable portion of the population, think that being hungry is an hour or two gaps between meals; or when they had their last big Mac.
I was born in the mid thirties at the time of the depression, I was at that time the youngest in the family with my two older brothers Ronnie and Bobby, we were very poor but then so were many others. My father had been out of work for nine years and had to try to find ways to feed a hungry family, you see there wasn’t the system we have today where anybody can claim almost anything whether they have contributed or not. Sometimes my father would be out all night fishing with some friends who had an old boat; the North Sea then still had quite a lot of fish for the taking. Had it not been for my father catching fish we would surly have been a lot worse off, most people today could not understand the poverty and hardship that we in this country had to endure, especially in the North East of England. My father was an excellent artist just one of the many things that he could do, he would draw paint and make pictures for just coppers; it all helped to put bread on the table.
Just before the second world war he joined the Territorial Army to get a bit extra cash, however it was not long after that he was called up for war, I remember that Christmas we had nothing my mother couldn’t afford anything for us children.
When the air raids started it was hell with incendiary and explosive bombs raining down on us; whistling bombs we used to call them as they made this terrible whistling noise together with the anti-air craft guns firing. The anti-air craft guns made frightening noises and shrapnel used to be falling from the sky; you could hear it hit the roofs and bounce of the ground and walls. One night my mother went to the door to look out, one of my aunts shouted for her to come in and just as she was closing the door a huge lump of shrapnel stuck in the door, my mother went very pale.
Some times the family used to shelter under the kitchen table as was recommended early on, the screams from my cousins just young girls and the rest of us was horrific, my cousins would wet themselves and we would all be sitting in pools of urine on the cold lino floor.
Later as the war progressed my two older brothers were evacuated, my mother and I stayed to the autumn 1941 when we moved to the country with an aunt grandmother and young cousin.