Happy memories of ration books and penny sweets

Childhood days make for some of our most treasured memories. Here BOB ROBINSON recalls penny sweets from the tuckshop and how growing up in the post-war 1940s left him with a real taste for butter...

AS far as I can recall, the house I was born in had a lounge, an eat-in kitchen, a downstairs bathroom and a flush toilet that was off the rear porch on the other side of the kitchen door. Upstairs were two-anda-half bedrooms.

We had a small front garden and a fairly long rear one. I recall renewing my relationship with Nurse Barlow when she gave me an enema, apparently to make sure I didn’t get worms! It was done in our lounge with me lying on our drop arm sofa.

I recall the sofa well since I had my afternoon naps on it in order to build up my strength after a bout of scarlet fever.

Similar afternoon naps continued when I first went to Oakhill infants school as we were given pillows and, of an afternoon, having placed them on the desk, we were encouraged to close our eyes for half-an-hour or so.

My pillow had a yellow wheelbarrow patch sewn on to it which matched the picture above the peg on which I hung my coat. There was a sand pit in the school yard, circular as I recall, in which we were able to play if the weather was kind enough.

Sometime near the end of the war in Europe, whether just before or after I don’t recall, my mum and I visited my mum’s sister – my aunty Beattie – who lived in the Birmingham area near to Longbridge where my uncle Charlie worked.

We went in my Uncle Harry’s Fordson van, me sitting on cushions in the back.

I could see through the windscreen between the two front seats as we approached my aunty’s house and I remember being amazed at the seemingly hundreds of barrage balloons, like huge grey elephants floating in the sky, but tethered to the ground by thick cables.

It was also probably around this time that I became aware that the war against the Japanese was still going on in the Far East and that eventually we would celebrate a thing called VJ day.

On June 8, 1946, which was declared as “Victory Celebration

Day”, all school children received a printed message King George VI which started: “Today, as we celebrate victory, I send this personal message to you and all other boys and girls at school...” I still have my copy.

By then I was in the juniors at Oakhill and at some stage was able to go to and from school on my own on the bus, with a penny for each of the journeys.

Sometimes, of an afternoon, the tuck shop and its penny treats beckoned, which then meant a walk home.

One day, after having such a treat, I arrived at Hanford Bridge to find the River Trent had overflowed and effectively cut off the Trent Vale/ Oakhill side from the Hanford side.

I had to wade through and ended up with soaked shoes and socks. I expected my mum to be up in arms but I think she was just pleased that I was safe.

During the war and for a good few years after it had ended many

everyday items were rationed.

Every family member had a ration book made up of pages of coupons and the requisite numbers of coupons were clipped out in line with the quantity of goods purchased.

One of my everlasting memories was that my mum would divide out our individual weekly butter rations which were then kept on the stillage in the pantry so that we could use it as required.

My favourite way was to have dry

bread all week long so that at the weekend I would spread all my ration in one go to really get that buttery taste. Even now I have to have enough butter on my toast to clearly see my teethmarks in it after each bite!

I remember using my sweet coupons well after I was at Longton High School as sweets were rationed right through to February 1953.

Another memory I have is if we lacked real toothpaste – it used to come in little tins a bit like we have shoe polish today and was often pink in colour – we had to brush with a home-made mixture of soot and salt which my mum put out on an old saucer.

My mum’s shopping was a bit varied. Before moving to Hanford and well before my birth my parents lived in Spode Street, just off Campbell Road, within a quarter of a mile or so of their respective parents.

There was a general food shop on the next corner, Corporation Street/ Campbell Road, run by a Mr Titterton and I guess that that is where they shopped at that time.

I recall that Mr Titterton would sometimes make deliveries of goods to our house as he drove to his home in Bankhouse Road, Trentham.

But my mum also used the Co-op in Hanford, which was situated in High Street – later called Mayne Street – opposite an allotments site.

If I shopped with her I was always fascinated by the overhead “Dart Cash Carrier” system – little circular metal pots hung on overhead wires that whisked the money away to a cashier somewhere and then returned with the change and a receipt.

My mum had a Co-op dividend number but I can’t recall it now. I do remember a Mr Mason who sold vegetables all around the village from the back of a cart pulled by a horse. My dad was a keen gardener and if the horse left a deposit near our gate I was sent out with a bucket and shovel to claim the steaming manure.

Another delivery man was Mr Reeves the coal man who humped one hundredweight (about 50 kilograms) sacks on his back to everyone’s coal house. He was always black with coal dust

Back at Oakhill Juniors things continued. I recall making a papiermâché model of a squirrel which looked quite good and which I painted a brown/red colour. I suppose today’s children would colour them grey.

I remember a school trip to Dudley Zoo; a 78rpm record made of us singing songs we had learned, including the “Derby Ram”, “Barbara Allen”, “Out in the Garden” and “Kelvin Grove”.

I remember the tunes and some of the words to the first three, but “Kelvin Grove” escapes me.

We also had dancing lessons. I don’t recall the type of dancing but I recall the names of three of the girls who were in my class – Kathleen Archer, Gail Bates and Gillian Tomlinson.

I somehow don’t recall any of the boys’ names. What does that say about how my memory currently works?

A ration book from the post-war period. Inset, Bob Robinson as he looks today and, right, as he was as a schoolboy.

Clockwise from top: an overhead cash system similar to the one Bob would have seen at the Co-op in Hanford; the label from a 78rpm record of songs recorded by Bob and fellow pupils at Oakhill Junior School; Bob loved to save up his butter ration and eat it all in one go on a piece of toast; the letter every child received from King George VI on June 8, 1946.