Patricia Curry

"I had almost forgotten the taste of chocolate...It was vaguely familiar."

The Story

Patricia paints a colourful picture of a party organised by American soldiers that had been stationed here during the Second World War. In the story Patricia recalls a multitude of feelings, emotions, sights, sounds and tastes that were experienced by a child during these dark years of conflict.

Patricia wrote ...

After the war, my father was demobbed out of the army. We left Moira and moved to my father’s birthplace, Sheffield, England. There was my older sister Maureen, myself, my brother Brian and my younger sister Carol. We went to live with my father’s Aunt Minnie.

It was a large house. Aunt Min as we called her lived in the upper part of the house and we lived in the basement. We had to go through Aunt Min’s living room and up three flights of stairs to go to bed. She was elderly and didn’t take kindly to us children traipsing through her living room.

It was particularly hilly where we lived. Brian and I attended the local school. The hill up to the school was so steep, it had a hand rail. Every one used it in icy weather.
My sister Maureen got a job in a Jam Factory. She sat on a big stool and stirred the jam. I don’t know if she did this all day, but she loved it. My father got a job in the steel works and earned good money.

Rationing was still in force. I can remember well the day I tasted my first banana. It had no way near the impact on me that the chocolate ice cream had had. My mother had sent Brian and me to the shop with food coupons to get our ration of bananas. I also remember buying Puck balloons. These were a little bit more expensive than other balloons because they were so easy to blow up.

My mother couldn’t settle in England and wanted to go back to Belfast, but she was met with opposition from my father and Maureen. Maureen had made friends at work and didn’t want to go back home. My father said he wouldn’t earn the money that he was earning here.

We had been there a year and a half, when my ill health forced us back, not to Moira but to Belfast. I had severe Asthma which had got worse since we moved to Sheffield. Because it was an industrial city, it was covered in an umbrella of smoke. My mother was advised by the doctor to take me home. He said my Asthma would only worsen if I stayed in Sheffield.

We went home by boat. Unfortunately, just before we were due to sail, Brian and I came down with chicken pox. Undeterred and anxious to go home, my mother sailed with us, chicken pox and all, to a new life that was about to begin in Belfast, but that is another story or two or three or four.

Patricia Curry.

WWII

Experineces of the Second World War have been a reccurring theme since the inception of Days Like This.

Here are some more stories, which like Patricia's deal with local people's memories of the great conflict

To go to Ruth McCart's story click here

To go to John Edmundson's story click here

To go to Lois McKee's story click here

To go to Jim Leckey's story click here

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