The Savage Spade

The earth lay about my feet like clumps of rich brown dumpling. At seven years old, I became aware, for the first time, of the earth’s sweet essence. We had just moved from a crowded grey tenement to a large cedar wood-built house on the outskirts of Dundee. Our house was built on prime farmland, rich and fertile, with an abundance of wild flowers, golden buttercups and silk red poppies, that came right up to our front door. All around the house, the air was pure and my world was green. I claimed this garden as mine.

The war was at our heels - no time to lay out the land. The priority was to get families into decent housing. It wasn’t long before mother built a rickety rustic fence from thick branches, that we had dragged from nearby woodland. “Claiming my space”, she would say. Mother decided that all would become a vegetable plot. Sadly, the green would soon be turned to brown by the savage spade to host gangly, gnarled brussel sprout stalks and ugly, weathered potato shaws, that had to remain above the earth for months on end, until the crop was ready to be lifted.

I would gladly have forgone all those fat, soft, succulent chips at winter tea times, just to have the garden back as I had found it. As it turned out, we became very dependent on this ground through the hungry years of war. I still remember the fear, when I heard my sister Jean’s voice escape from my mother’s kitchen window. The family had been listening to a news bulletin on the wireless. “War is declared,” she gasped out. Her voice stung the warm morning air. The voice of Neville Chamberlain boomed on about war and food rationing and spies.

War, to me, meant black-booted soldiers tramping along cobbled streets, a vision that was to march through my nightmares till war’s end.

Rationing became a prominent word in our lives, as everything became scarce and mother substituted parsnips in her jam making. One thing that wasn’t rationed was “Viroll”, a sweet, tangy malt, sold in chemists and baby clinics in small fat brown jars. Often I would go with one of my sisters down to the Caledon Shipyard, with lunch for three of my older sisters who had been conscripted into working there. A jar of “Viroll”, home-made pancakes and a flagon of soup was the menu I remember most.

Tattie scones, queen of the kitchen — potatoes straight from the garden, milk, some flour. It was a wartime stand-by; along with home made jam. I treasure the memory of the aroma of my mother’s kitchen. The thing that hit me hardest was sweet rationing - two ounces per week allowed each person. It was goodbye to choosing sweets - you took what was on offer, such as insipid, boiled toffee, almost colourless. Chocolate was almost a memory.

Maureen Black via Dundee Central Library

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