There were no school uniforms, you just had your school clothes, but you couldn’t just go into a shop and buy clothes and you had to use coupons to buy your clothes, so you had only your school clothes and your Sunday best, so there wasn’t a great deal of choice like you have now a days. Another thing was you have your sweeties and your tuck shop and stuff like that well we had none of that because sweets were rationed and if the local shop, you know the one at the end of Bedford Road, it was called Jannies and if Jannies got it sweets it just spread around the place like wild fire, the queue was there within five minuets and the sweets didn’t last very long. The other way which you got sweets was if your mum had an extra pound of sugar, you could take it to some of the sweet shops and exchange it we went to the shop on the Gallowgate to get sweets.

Did you know anyone who had vegetables?

Oh yes, I’m glad you reminded me of that, people did do that you could share it all around. My father was a fish salesman and whilst fish was in plentiful supply but meat was very scarce, because dad was a salesman we never wanted for something to eat and he had a friend who owned a shop which provided food for the fishing trawlers. So that is where my mum did her shopping and they were very good to us the owners of that shop. Yes we were very fortunate. I don’t think fish was rationed but it was in short supply.

I was on the phone to my sister the other day and I said I was coming here and I said did she have any particular memories of the war years as she is older than me and has more memories. She said that she remembered that she went to school in Belmont Street. Mum gave her money every day and said to her if there is a queue at Knowles the fruitier just stand in that queue and Sally said but what am I standing waiting for. Whatever you can get just get it because you couldn’t get much in the way of fruit. Sally said she would have stood in that queue and some days she would maybe come home with a couple of tomatoes or one apple or one pear or an orange. But that was a treat for the whole family now can you imagine one apple being a treat for a family of 5. It doesn’t bear thinking about I think my grandchildren would be most annoyed if I said there you are an apple between the 4 of you. They would think gee wiz granny has flipped.

What I suffered from not getting fruit but the biggest suffering was not getting the sweets, sweets were just so difficult to get and like Mary her mother had a pound of sugar we were very short of sweets. But I think that is why so many of my generation eat far too many sweets because once the war was over and rationing was over we just bought sweets where ever and when ever we could.

Mrs Taylor spoke about rationing and about clothes being rationed you needed coupons for any clothes so I will share with you a story that I heard from a lady who got married in the war years and she didn’t have enough clothing coupons to buy a wedding dress or buy material to have a wedding dress made when you think of brides today can have whatever they want or what they can afford but for her she couldn’t have afforded the dress money wise but she couldn’t have afforded the dress clothing coupon wise and when you think of that, that really was sad because it must have taken away from what the girls and boys as an extremely special day.