For the Allied Powers 1939-40 were the years of the Phoney
War. I took a rather different view. For me it was a fight to the death. I
wasn’t bothered that Our Side was being trounced all over Europe, that Dunkirk
was a humiliation however much the Prime Spin Doctor Churchill was desperately
trying to sell it as a victory. The nightly bombings were exciting and there
was always the chance of another sighting of Olive Cobbold’s bosom. But not
even that could distract me from my major strategy. I was determined not to be
evacuated.
I had an early victory by faking spectacular ill health when,
in 1939, all the city children in the kingdom were evacuated to the country,
leaving only a hard core of refuseniks behind. What a blissful period that was.
School hours were cut to an hour and a half a day and kindly teachers were
brought out of retirement to cosset us. The streets seemed knee-deep in
desirable shrapnel, even precious parts of downed Nazi bombers.
My parents were wondering which was doing the most damage,
Hitler’s Luftwaffe or the mobile anti-aircraft guns which for reasons unclear went
from street to street firing so noisily they broke every window in sight. My
father said it was just like France in World War One when the Royal Artillery
competed with the Germans to see who could kill the most Allied troops. It was
decided it would be safer to send me to stay with Aunt Isobel in Blackpool. It
only took me a week of tears and tantrums before Aunt Isobel decided if she
could have the choice she would send me home and my mother could send her the anti-aircraft
gun. What, she asked, is so bad about broken windows?
Somerford Hall was much harder to shed. Somerford Hall was a
sort of public school for the working class. It had been a holiday camp before
the war - which was the way my father sold it to me. I was a bit suspicious but
the feeling was temporarily lulled when we ‘new boys’ gathered at the station
and were handed plates of chocolate biscuits whilst the camera man from the
Daily Herald took our photographs. I thought this was a good sign because
chocolate biscuits were rationed. Alas, when the cameraman finished the teacher
collected all the biscuits and put them back in the tin, and I began to plan
The Great Escape.
Unfortunately it was hard to find anything to complain
about. The Hall was set in the rolling Cheshire countryside by a river. The
boys were housed in wooden chalet-like dormitories and the teachers seemed
intent on teaching us as little as possible. I searched for several days before
I found something to complain about.
The food won by a mile.
Every morning after breakfast I put fried egg and baked beans in an
envelope and sent them to my parents so they could see how little we were given
to eat. I believe it was the postman who was instrumental in getting me home.
If memory serves, he offered to collect me in his van. He said that people were
complaining because bits of egg were seeping out of my envelope and coating his
letters with albumen.
It was good to be home and, since by this time the other
stay at home kids had been farmed out, I had all the shrapnel to myself.
Food was severely rationed. Each person got a weekly ration.
4 ounces of bacon, 4 ounces of sugar, 2
ounces of tea, a shilling’s worth of meat, 2 ounces of butter, one egg, 3 pints
of milk.
Every eight weeks we were allowed a tin of milk powder;
every month, eight ounces of jam. Fortunately
my policeman father, who was a “speed cop”, was given the job of driving the
three-man team of detectives set up to control the Black Market under an
Inspector Stainton who had a different interpretation of controlling. To him it
meant running it.
Within a very short time our house was stocked with sides of
bacon, bolts of cloth, cartons of eggs and huge tins of jam which he shared at
very reasonable rates with selected neighbours. Much of the whisky he kept for
himself. I developed quite a taste for it and since he marked the level in the
bottle I would take my share and then fill it up to the mark with water. To the
day of his death he swore the distillers were watering their whisky. The older
I got the paler the whisky became.
On the food front the only competition he had was a
battalion of American infantry, posted in the village in the run up to D-Day.
To my father’s chagrin, they gave away food, cigarettes, chocolates, even
bottles of whisky to the families on whom they were billeted. The wives and
daughters in the billets suddenly blossomed with silk stockings, and chain
smoked. My mother hinted darkly - and perhaps a little enviously - what they
were offering in return. It was a toss up whether it was General Eisenhower or
my father who waited more anxiously for June 6th.
OH BEAST ITY
I all but choked on my vodka martini, and my partridge and
mushy peas went down the wrong way, when R4 broadcast a “2 way” between two
obesity experts in Mexico and Rotherham. It wasn’t so much that, like most
female broadcasters, they had voices like cheap scent, nor that if I wanted to
conjure up a vision of Hell it would be an even bet between those two cities in
which one I would hasten death by over eating.
Though I suspect fish and chips would win easily as a death hastener
over tortillas and there was little to choose between massacre by drug dealers
or kicked to death by football hooligans.
The programme lacked balance. No voice spoke up for the
suffering portly. I am 21 stone, twice the recommended weight for an elderly
gentleman, 5ft 8 ins from natty footwear to jaunty cap. You see the point.
Whatever computation you use there are now two of me. I am, in a word, twins.
Or as Shakespeare prettily put it, a two backed beast.
And there is the rub. Speaking for my other half we should
be eligible for two personal allowances for tax purposes. Whereas the single
person is allowed four units of alcohol we should be able to claim eight. Six
rather than three large vodka martinis would be gratefully received and perhaps
a brace of partridge to each cheek.
Be fair. That is all we ask. When I buy a suit I am charged
extra for the cloth involved yet justice surely demands I get two suits for one.
Two old age pensions would be nice and a £200 fuel allowance seems a bit
niggardly when I am keeping a brace of people warm.
A CORNUCOPIA OF GIFTS
Intriguingly, we have been sent a Fortnum and Mason’s Christmas
hamper with no clue as to the donor, not even a U NO WHOO to tax the mind. Best
of all, my lovely granddaughter-in-law Sarah announced this week that I am once
again to be a great-grandfather, or indeed two g.g.f.
I do know one Lordly
F and M regular. He caused quite a stir as a boy when he called in to complain
about the lack of jam in a school hamper.
A Jeeves like creature in a frock coat shimmered up to ask
if he could be of assistance to the “young gentleman”
“And who might you be” the young gentleman demanded
“I am in charge of this floor”
“ Then I should get it swept. It’s filthy”
