Wartime rations

Louise Dando-Collins, who now lives in Australia, has sent some more of her memories of 1940 and 50s Dundee:

“Dundee was still on wartime rations right into the 1950s. The local government in Dundee kindly provided underpriviledged children free orange juice, and the not so popular cod liver oil. School milk was provided without any refrigeration, and the tiny bottles of white gold filled many an empty belly.

“Ann Street School had a catering service –‘the dinneries’ where the youngsters could buy a hot midday meal – the likes of a hearty soup, figs and custard, sago, or tapioca – for next to nothing. Green vegetables never found their way into the dinneries, though.

“The Dandy and The Beano, together with a bar of Keiller’s Toffee, kept many a child quietly entertained on a Saturday morning for 6d. Dundee was famous worldwide for its Timex watch factory, Keiller’s jams and marmalade and Dundee cake.

“Passing the Keiller’s factory with its delicious aromas floating on the wind stirred the appetite on the way to a local sports ground.

“Dundee was considered a safe place, where young folk delivered newspapers before dawn to local tenements’ dark stairwells, before heading off to school – to a classroom of sometimes more than 40 students, where the heavy leather strap was given for being late, forgetting to do homework, and misbehaving. It left red welts on the hand and wrist for hours after striking.

“A 1947 February winter’s day was classed as the ‘worst ever’.

“Old and young alike took to the streets in droves to have fun in the snow. Sled runs were made on a thick coating of hard ice, where the older children delivered a kindly shove to the younger ones in home-made toboggans.

“They giggled and laughed as their steeds slid at an alarming rate to the bottom of a sloping street, dressed in mittens, hats, scarves, and, if lucky, fur-lined boots.

“In 1950s winters, returnable glass milk bottles, delivered to the front door by the milkman, had a silver top, with the contents usually frozen for a few inches down. Hungry birds would peck holes in the silver paper and get themselves a frozen feed, and hope it would come with a few crumbs from a kindly human; who, if she’d left her washing out overnight, would find it frozen hard as a board on the clothes line.” There will be more from Louise in a later column.