Rationing in Bangor

This story is taken from an interview with Joan Campbell, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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[rationing]
Och, rationing was nothing. We got a bar of chocolate a week. Or a qtr of sweets. We got boxed eggs. I never seen a banana til the war was over. We had sorta black bread we were eating, Echo Margerine …

[what was black bread?]
It was really what you call white bread now, it was made with dark flour and it was what you’d say, very dark bread. When white bread came in, like a sliced pan, we all thought “oh, marvellous!” But that was their reaction.
And bacon. Och, you never got bacon — you only got a wee bit. If you were lucky. And my mother used to make soup. If you got a bit of meat at the weekend, that had to do you all week. And I remember going up to Mawhinney’s the Butcher’s and getting 2.5 lbs of shin, for that made soup. And that soup done us 3 days, if it was eeked out. The meat done us for our tea that night, with something, tomato or something with it, and a slice of bread. It’s … and for style, you were growing up. “Oh, you can’t have shoes this time. It’s your brother’s turn to have the shoes”. Because it was all rationing and it was all coupons. And so you had to wait your turn.
I had 3 brothers, I was the only girl. And my eldest brother he joined the Air Force, so he fought during the war.

[smuggling]
We used to have charabanc runs in them days, what we used to call charabanc runs. What you call a bus run, but in them days they called it a charabanc run. And we went down South, and we brought up stuff. And my mother, my youngest brother was 10 yrs younger than me, and I had white buckskin boots for him stuck up my jumper. Oh, and different things we got and hid, frightened of them talking it off us. Everybody went down, got stuff and hid them.
Everybody done it. I remember one time my father took us to Dublin during the war, and my father got drunk down there, and he was sitting with an overcoat on him with “Dublin” wrote inside it. My mother couldn’t get it off him to get the tabs off it in case the Gardee seen it, and one of these hats. And we all had like wee coats, and the Guardee came in and he says “I’m afraid, madam, it’s a bit hot for all these coats.” It was the summertime. And he turned to my father and says “Have you anything to declare there, boss?” my father says “yes”, and the sweat broke on my mother. Oh my god. And he put his hand in his pocket and he brought out a handful of sweets. “That’s what I have to declare.”
“Ah, just eat them. On your way!”

[would you be growing your own food as well?]
oh yes, we tried to. But then again, it was very hard to get seeds and stuff like that. But Daddy put lettice in, and scallions maybe if we were lucky.

We grew up during the war. They say we’re the generation with the best teeth in the world, because we had no sweets or sweety things. Every cloud has a silver lining.

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