Bombs, ARP & Home Guard, Part 2 War Work and Rationing

R: Father had a lathe had home, in his workshop, and he made thousands of small copper things. He was given - rods of copper would be delivered at home and he had no idea`of what he was doing, but he had to keep within a millimetre of .. so it was part of something. It might have been brass. But he struggled to keep up his quota.
M: And I know Dad did something similar. I don’t know what - he never spoke about it.
R: Dad didn’t know - he was quite open about it. I suppose they must have said ‘Has anybody got a lathe?’ Has anybody got a metalworking lathe? ... I don’t know how many he did, but there were times when he had to stay up late, because they were coming to pick them up and he hadn’t done his quota. And then there were Spitfire Weeks, and HMS Bridport Week, and Bridport bought a tank you know.
M: There was a big table with ...
R: Georgie Biles the painter - you must have come across Georgie Barrs? He was one of these brilliant sign writers. Every pub would have a Georgie Barrs sign. He was a big friend of Dad’s And if it was Spitfire Week there would be Spitfires painted on the clock. And I can remember going down, when we’d raised the money for HMS Bridport, to the ceremony outside the Town Hall and standing with the school and singing ‘Land of Hope & Glory’. I was at St. Ronan’s private school, then Bridport Grammar School. It must have been at St Ronan’s School because I started at Bridport Grammar in 1944.. We learned it by rote and it didn’t mean a thing to me! But I knew it was patriotic. “Land of Hope and Glory”? It was “Land of Soap and Water”! was the sort of Bridport version! The fund-raising things - Father built two swing boats which he’d put up at fetes and it was my job, when they’d done enough, to lift up the brake, which was a piece of wood that rubbed along the bottom and hold it tight while people got in and out. There was a lot of fund-raising, yep. And he became a Punch and Judy man as well, and I used to be his assistant for that. And the finale was - Georgie Biles painted the faces on these - absolutely brilliant - and the finale was Hitler. And he had a tiny little cap pistol and I had to get this thing ready and he would come up with Punch and I had to put it in Punch’s hand, and he shot Hitler, which was very un-Punch and Judy-like, but it went down well! And I had to make sure that the sausages went down the crocodile’s throat. Put my hand up alongside Fathers and pull the sausages down. So all these very strange things had to do with fund-raising.
M: And I can remember the British Restaurant too. We’d have a meal with them there on occasions. That was where the W.I. Hall was.
R: Rabbit pie was - you know, Father’s shot gun that he was going to use to deliver salvos to the Germans was much more important by supplying us with rabbits - and rooks! Rook pie was gorgeous. I used to love it! It was always at the beginning of May. I can remember because it was sister’s birthday I can remember we came back from shooting rooks on May 11th and my sister had been born. And it was gorgeous pink meat that Mother used to put into a pie, and it was delicious. But it only happened for about a fortnight a year. And one looked forward to next year’s arriving. I mean, the kids don’t understand nowadays. I mean, we had lettuces for three months of the year. And the first lettuce of spring was Ah!
M: Everything was seasonal wasn’t it. I can remember an elderly aunt who had lived in Guernsey who came back before it was occupied, and she always used to make our Christmas cake from carrots. And I can remember my grandmother bought several parachutes at the end of the war. I made lots of underclothes with them. I think it was nylon. Except the problem was that they were all cut on the cross, so it was very difficult. It was wonderful to have all these yards and yards of material to do things with.
R: Wartime was was generally a pull-together thing. We going out and sharing out fish, regularly. You know,once a week, twice a week,Dad said ‘You’d better go that way. You’d better go to another road’ To share the fish out. There was no money.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I can remember doing it. Going to the door and knocking on the door and saying ‘We’ve got some mackerel, do you want some mackerel this week?’ ‘Thank you very much’ and shut the door and gone. Occasionally you’d get the occasional coupon in a letter coming through the door - ‘I’m sure the kids would like these and we don’t eat sweets. But was not bartering as bartering. Nothing changed hands for handing over the fish or handing over a rabbit or handing over some rooks. It was just done b because we had too many. You could come back from a good morning with a box full of fish - a box the size of this table. Full of fish. Well ...
M: I mean, the same thing used to happen with my grandmother. She used to cook with the chickens and that sort of thing and people would come in and she’d be handing out meals. I mean she’d just give them, I think, until it ran out. You’d pas it round . We seemed have sugar at one point, which worried my mother to death - it was black market I think.
R: Under the stairs was this not very big sack of sugar, and she was worried to death, I mean literally! “I could end up in prison for this!”
M: I don’t know where it came from originally
R: Back of a lorry I think!
M: Dishing that out all around the neighbourhood. If people had something they’d share it around.
R: My overriding memories of that aspect of it was extreme generosity. One wonders where it all went.

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