Memories of the 40s

AKA bilberries
Very special - because they are so tiny and it took ages to pick enough bilberries for a pie!

Would they have been whortleberries thst my mother talked of? Or were they something else?

Born 1944 and can remember going to the Food Office for ration books which of course continued for some time after the war.
I started school wearing a garment called a gym slip - a pinafore dress with buttons on the shoulders. And box pleats front and back. They were colored navy, bottle green or black and the fabric was very itchy and uncomfortable. And under that, a liberty bodice. And hand knitted socks with elastic garters to hold the up.
My navy blue knickers had a pocket into which my mum tucked a hanky.

Liaise, I remember having boils on my knee. I actually discussed with DH recently why children no longer had them.

When milk went off my DM & DGM would strain it through a muslin and hang it outside the back door for the whey to drain away, leaving cottage cheese to be used in sandwiches and cooking.

We also kept chickens in the garden of our house and the non-layer turned up on the Christmas dining table. I remember DM getting in a man to do the job and pluck and eviscerate the bird. My DM tried to keep me elsewhere while this happened, I din't see the kill but I was fascinated watching the chicken being plucked.

I used to pick Erts with my Father on Dartmoor. Probably the same berries as whinberries. He had a motorbike and sidecar and would let me drive it over the moor, sitting on the petrol tank. My mother never knew.

Chicken plucking in the cellar at Christmas. The only time we had chicken in those days.

Monica, why don't children get these boils any more? We used to have them as children (early fifties)

I can remember fowls being drawn. Remember the smell and fascinated by the eggs inside the birds.
Yes navy gymslip and knickers. Navy school coat and Mac with a hood. Knicker elastic made into garters to keep up the 3/4 length socks.
Satchel and a wooden two tier pencil box with a sliding lid.
Ink Wells and blotting paper and wooden pens with nibs that crossed.

Born in 1946, we had a henrun in the back garden and our Mum used to be the person who despatched one of them at Christmas. The hen would be hung on the kitchen door handle until it was ready for plucking. Then Mum used to sit in front of the fire with the hen between her knees, tear the feathers out and throw them into the fire where they shrivelled up. I also remember the horrible smell when the innards were pulled and the fascination with what came out!
We also had locally caught rabbit which Mum skinned and would hang a rabbit's foot from the drawer knob on the kitchen table as a toy for the cat.
I doubt many of us could deal with pulling poultry or skinning rabbits these days. I know that I couldn't.

whitewave We used to use those wooden pens with disposable nibs. I still have a groove at the top of my middle finger from using them. I remember the proud day when I received a Conway-Stewart fountain pen with a little lever for filling the reservoir.

In the early 1970s my DH had an aunt and uncle who were huntin', shootin' fishin' country types and I remember the aunt bringing a rabbit round for DMiL and showing me how to skin it. making sure that I didn't rupture the spleen/gall bladder(?) so that the bile didn't leek out and contaminate the meat. I have never had any need to use this knowledge.

I can also remember how few clothes we had in those days compared with now. My school coat was my only outdoor coat and even attending a family wedding I am wearing my school uniform hat and coat, although I think the dress underneath was not a uniform dress.

We had a bucket in the scullery and we put food scraps in it. The pig-man came to collect it once a week. Boiled it all up for his pigs, which we went to see on our Sunday walks

We had a medium sized garden and most of it was given over to veg and fruit growing. When is was potato harvest I was allowed to collect all the tiny potatoes, most of them still clinging to the wiry roots,they were called pig potatoes, and I took them to a neighbour who kept pigs in her back garden,and she would give me 3d. I hated the home grown sprouts which were tiny and open, not like the firm ones we get today.

In 1960 the South London primary school where I taught had a pig bin in the playground. Also outside loos.
Occasionally a child misunderstood the task 'put it in the Big bin' to the despair of the school keeper who had to recover the contents of the waste paper basket from the school dinner scraps.
Some of those 3 decker schools are now converted to luxury apartments. There woodblocks floors of many classroom where pitted by female teachers' stiletto heels!

Born in 1946 I remember rationing and blue bags for sugar and dried fruit.
Freezing cold winters with chilblains and red welts from Wellington boots.
Impetigo was treated with gentian Violet so it was obvious who was infected.
Kaolin poultices were used for boils and even round the chest for pleurisy. I remember my father being treated with poultices and my mother feeding him up with raw egg whisked with a spoonful of sherry, supposedly a tonic.
Cold lino floors with the odd clippy mat and ice on the inside of the windows. The pipes froze every winter and coal was in short supply as were most things but don't recall anyone complaining.

Thanks all keep the stories coming all so interesting. My late husband also mentioned that he could remember food rationing. While it didn't affect us too much as my father was a manager of a hotel after he was badly wounded and before he was wounded, as my mother's clan were from Eire, she also was not affected as she stayed with them before my father was wounded.
In Eire there must have been a lot of rabbit stew as one uncle used to shoot them and my aunt in the early fifties used to make, what I then called this awful rabbit stew.

Excuse the English, didn't read it through!

We All caught mumps, measles and chicken pox. And polio was still around too. Children with their legs in irons. Nhs glasses with one lens covered with elastoplast to cure a lazy eye. Only ever one fat child in the class, who got picked on.

Our collective pig bin was in the road by the side of a lamp post. Seriously smelly.
Front door blinds to stop the paint blistering in the summer sun
Fruit bowl at Christmas no other time.
Beef every Sunday. Large chicken at Christmas as a treat.
Bottles of milk with cardboard lids and before then Monika the milk ladys black van where we got our milk in jugs.
Post on Christmas Day, and parcels coming in borrowed vans.
Bread man with long hooked pole.
Corona man.

We had 'Beryl the Milk' with her horse and cart. Churns at the back and a long handled ladle . I see her in my mind as something from Ben-Hur but of course she wasn't