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I remember rationing. When I was 8 years old my mum would mix the margarine and butter, to make it go further, but because I didn’t like marg, I had my own ration of butter on a little plate. My mum made puddings to fill us up. Often we only had Farley Rusks for dinner. We couldn’t get a banana unless you had a green ration book, issued for children under 5 or expectant mums. We kept chickens for meat. To make the mincemeat go further, she would mix a handful of rice in with it. We come home from school at lunchtime, sometimes we had spam fritters. We had school milk but they stored it by the open fire which made it warm; this put me off milk for ever.
We had gas mantles on the walls and a Kitchener (oven) in the scullery. It was my job to clean it every week with Zebo. We had to have weekly baths in front of the fire in a galvanised bath, all taking turns using carbolic soap.
For washing our clothes we used sunlight soap. We had a stone copper in the corner of the scullery and lit a fire under it. At Christmas she cooked the Christmas pudding in it. She would iron with 2 flat irons, one warming up on the Kitchener. Wash day was every Monday; the rest of the week was taken up with drying and ironing. We used to wear our clothes for a few days at a time to save washing.

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