Rationing

Rationing

In the second world war you were lucky if you were at school or in a
job
with a good canteen.. What you ate here was not included in your
food
ration.
housewives suffered for the most for they had no opportunity to eat
out.
I am talking mainly about the majority of the population. I have
no
knowledge of how professional classes fared. But remember my mother
selling
some clothing coupons to a doctor's family. In those days the majority
did
not consider themselves "Middle class" - unlike today.

Meat was rationed by price. My mother was in despair when the meat
ration
went down from 1s 6d per week to 1s per week.
Everyone got one pound of marmalade or jam per week. Bread was
unrationed
during the war. Bread rationing did not start until after the
war.

I remember when my boy cousin stayed with my mother and myself in
the
country in the middle of the war. I had a slice of bread with a
scraping
of butter and spread it thickly with marmalade. My cousin shouted at
me.
I pointed out that this was only fair because I wanted to eat only
one
slice whereas my cousin was devouring two, so of course his
marmalade
should be spread more thinly.
I am sure that many petty quarrels were caused by rationing.

Because meat was in short supply, another cousin and I always hoped
to
catch a wild rabbit, but never succeeded! We were told that it was
quite
easy to kill a rabbit by throwing stones at it and believed this
nonsense
because during the corn harvest, we watched for many hours at the side
of
a field, waiting for the rabbits to run out.
In 1945 and 1946 after the war, rationing became more severe. Bread
was
rationed though there was a liberal allowance. But poorer people were
also
rationed by price. While my father was in the army and my mother had
only
a small allowance, I remember being told to take a tine of sardines
back
to the shop because it was of high quality and too expensive for us. We
had
to make do with the cheap sardines, which were less than half the
price.
Tinned goods were rationed on a points system.

Rationing gradually petered out after the war. I went to work in London
and
by 1950 did not notice it, though I am not sure when it ended. (A
recent radio programme mentioned that rationing officially ended in the
in 1953)