The impact of the war on our family
We lived just off the Eynsham Road on the outskirts of Oxford. It was a new house and garden was farm land; still ploughed next door by one man and a horse. Much of my family lived in London or Bristol and took refuge with us when the bombing was bad.
Christmas 1940 we had a houseful. My father was working as a code breaker at Bletchley (see 'Codebreakers' by Hinsley and Strpp 236 -7) and also had to do Home Guard duty. I have the records of him attending sessions on Lewis gun, Sten gun musketry and bayonet. His father, working as a chef at the United Service club in London, also had do firewatch duty on the roof. In those days Oxford had two stations and my father could take a train to Bletchely from the LNER station (later a tyre garage). My grandparents had a Morrison Shelter in their house in London which I slept in when visiting later. Various family members living with us tried digging the garden and growing vegetables. We also kept chickens and there was a discussion about having egg rations or food for the chickens. One side of the garden were elderberry bushes and we were encouraged to pick these and take to a centre in Botley. There was no NHS and when my father was ill with leukaemia, bills for blood transfusion had to be paid and were quite considerable.
I don't remember much about food, except milk puddings/tapioca (fish eyes in glue!) and semolina sometimes flavoured with chocolate or concentrated orange. Grocery shopping had to be from one shop where you were registered for rations. I liked dried bananas and didn't think much of the real thing later! During the war we both lived with our grandmas quite often, also two great aunts, one permanently for a couple of years. My father managed to have some spells of leave but lived in digs in Bletchley. Most people with cars had them off the road in the garage on bricks to protect the tyres. Milk and coal were delivered by horse drawn vehicles. Next to us Mr Curtis (the builder) had an aeroplane in a shed but we never saw it.
