RATION BOOKS

Evening Star, Issue 23729, 9 November 1940, Page 3

RATION BOOKS

HOUSEKEEPING IN WAR CONDITIONS

[Written by E. B. W hitelaw, for the ‘ Evening Star.’]

Shopping to-day in Britain with wartime conditions and ration books is not without its difficulties to the women here, but to mine have been added the fact that, being not so long here from New Zealand, I am still learning how to shop in England, where to go and what to buy. i First of all 1 had to acquire a ration book. This was done by presenting my national registration card given to me upon arrival in Liverpool at our local food office in Worthing, Sussex, and when my book arrived i had to begin the art of housekeeping for two “ for the duration.”

A ration book is an official-looking small book about 6in square, with a yellow paper cover printed with O.H.M.S and official-looking stamps in red, and one’s name and address, date, and identification and book numbers on it. Inside the cover are the spaces for the names and addresses of one’s retailers of rationed goods—the choice of tradesmen being left to the individual —a full page of instructions and the pages of ration coupons themselves, small numberd and named sections. Each book contains three months’ supplies for meat, sugar, butter, bacon, cooking fats, and two pages of spare coupons, one of which is now being used for tea. At the end is a stamped and addressed ijost-card. to the local food offied, to be cut out, filled in, and posted at the end of two mouths for tho next book to be supplied. Nowadays in England it is positively “ not done ” to go shopping by motor car, owing to the petrol restrictions and to the fact that most people havo had to sacrifice their cars or store them for as long as the war lasts, because of the high taxation. I'have managed to limit my shopping to two days a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, and on those days after dressing I prepare myself to go out shopping. Gone are the carefree days in Dunedin, when ] shopped simply by getting into the car and going to town for whatever was needed. Now I have to go through a complicated routine before even leaving the bouse. First of all I collect my shopping basket, a huge, useful-looking outfit in brown and green wickerwork, from its nail in the pantry. Then I must see that my identification card has been changed from one handbag to the other, for I am liable to be stormed by a policeman, air warden, soldier, or anyone in authority and asked to show it; failing to do so 1 am subject to a heavy fine or a term in gaol. Also I must have a label or a card on which is written my next of kin, to he informed if I should become the victim of an air raid or such; we face hard facts iu England these days. Then I must collect my gas mask, and if there is any reason why I should not be back before “ black-out ” my torch, with its regulation two layers of tissue paper over it, and last, but not least, my two ration books. By this time I am usually thinking the most unlady-like thoughts about Hitler and his regime. Everything in order. I am then free to go out and catch the next bus into town.

At the bus stop, now beside a camouflaged pill-box, are usually collected a little knot of women with just as busi-ness-like-looking baskets as I possess, for delivery of goods has been severely curtailed since the war. A huge green and white double-decker bus hoves into sight, and we all cheerfully crowd on, jostling one another with our extrasize baskets,' but no one really minds. The route leads mostly along the seafront beside the English Channel, and at this time of the year and during this ideal summer weather should be crowded by holiday-makers sun bathing on the benches or sporting about in the water; but not a bather is to be seen, and the beach is deserted except for soldiers at work or on duty. All the pleasure boats have long since disappeared; and also the gay bathing huts, and in their places stretch a long line of grim concrete anti-tank defence, gun _ emplacements, trenches, sandbagged gun pits, and barbed wire entanglements, with the sparkling sea beyond. Sometimes for us shoppers there is the added excitement of something new having happened, such as seeing where a German bomber chased by British fighters jettisoned its last bomb on the beach near a public house called the Half Brick and blew the windows out of every house in the vicinity. Fortunately no one was hurt. Another day we saw that a great gaping hole had ’appeared in oiir attractive local pier. A section had been blown out to prevent the enemy using it as a landing place in the event of invasion. Once in the town the business of shopping begins in earnest. On the Tuesday I buy my rationed goods for the week, and for two people I am entitled to Boz butter, 11b sugar, Jib bacon, Jib of tea, and 3s 8d worth of meat for a week. If Ido not buy cooking fats 1 am entitled to 2oz extra of butter, and twice this season I have been able to get 41b extra of sugar for jam-making. Buying rationed goods is not at all difficult, but where the harrassed housewife has to exercise ingenuity is in the supplementing of them with other goods to make up the week’s menus. Women cooking for one or two are worse off with rationing than people with families, for a baby from six months on rates a full ration card, and the whole family benefits. Fish, not at all rationed, is at a premium, for one has only to imagine the dangers with which a crew of a trawler is faced, such as being bombed by enemy planes, striking a mine, and being restricted to certain areas, and the fact that off a coast such as this little fishing at all is allowed, makes it easy to realise that fish has long since soared in price to a luxury. The whole cost of living has gone up with such a bump that it is amazing how the poor manage to live: their daily menu becomes one of conjecture, and certainly starchy foods must figure largely in their diet. Grilling steak is 2s 2d a lb; stewing steak Is 4d; clump chops 9d each; pork sausages, made according to Government recipe, are Is 6d a lb; eggs are 2s 9d a dozen for first grade, and are now limited by the shops who have been able to purchase some to one half-dozen a week to their registered customers. Sheeps’ kidneys, unrationed as offal, have climbed up in price to 6d each; tripe is _9d, and liver Is 6d a lb. Kipuers have kept to lOd a lb. and with fresh herrings, which once were regarded as the poor man’s fish, selling at 7d u lb. are given prominence on everyone’s weekly menu. A week-end roast of beef or lamb is usually about 5s or so. for a 31b to 41b out. and main' friends and relatives now, club tof'ether to serve more or less communal dinners over the week-end. I Naturally, people, are encouraged to

have many vegetable curries, with as much rice as possible, and plenty of potatoes. As I write I glance at a suggested war-time menu for a week, which says in its caption that husbands are always amused when mother is “ different,” but suggesting that these dishes be tried out on them and the family: Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, and stewed fruit are for Sunday’s dinner, but Sunday’s supper has descended to the lower end of the scale, with potato soup, toast and dripping. On Tuesday the last of the cold meat is made into Cornish pasties. On Wednesday herring pie is the star-point of the day; Thursday bullock’s heart—but the fact that one bullock has only one heart makes one think that not too many families could so indulge. Kggs in various ways, such as on toast; backed eggs are given, but are now quite out of order, as many shops have not been able to get any for weeks. Stewed rabbit is suggested for Friday,- Rice, cheese, and vegetables help out for various suppers, and porridge, potato, cakes, kedgeree, sausages, oat cakes, and potted herrings make up the breakfast side. The booklet says that husbands love it just the saipe as old-time menus: I wonder. Rut I digress from my shopping. Bakers and pastrycooks have not been so restricted as butchers, who depend upon distant New Zealand and Australia and South America for their trade. By the way. bread, cakes, buns, and scones are still to be seen in plenty. They were even as sweetly ornate as usual, until some member of Parliament, gazing in a pastrycook’s window while waiting for his hus, eyed with acute horror a windowful of cakes in sugary array, when no doubt suffering from the lack of accustomed sugar in his tea, and forthwith saw that a regulation was passed curtailing all sugar for icing. Eclairs are now minus their jaunty brown caps, sugar buns are devoid of most of their entrancing coatings, and chocolate-dipped cakes look very nude and uninteresting, halfdipped or so. Usually my last call is at one of these shops for some buns, a tea cake, or some small cakes, for baking at home is very difficult these days. Back at the bus again, I meet returning fellow shoppers, and wc all look more or less like a gang of shoplifters, for to save paper owing to the paper shortage, all possible goods are bought without wrappings, and packets of tea. floor polish in gaudy this, washing soda, and such protrude nakedly from each basket,. leaving no doubt 'as to what Mrs Smith or Mrs Jones has been buying. Everyone is quite pleased, for there have been no air-raid warnings necessitating a, hurried rush into a nearby public air raid shelter or to take cover in a shop. As the bus rumbles back along the sea front and i sit planning the meals ahead. I sometimes gaze out across the water to the horizon, and, forgetting that bevond it lie the Nazi hordes in occupied France, I think again of New Zealand, with its tables groaning with food—rich cakes, innocent of lard or margarine, thick icings that know not the" real meaning of sugar shortage, sponge cakes with lashings of cream, feather-light pastries over the luxury of apricot and peach pies, custards that know not what it means if the egg supplies from Holland, Denmark, and Belgium are suddenly cut off juicy chops and steaks unknown to months of frozen entombment, and succulent joints of home-killed lamb, and butter, bacon, and eggs galore. The bus jerks to inv stop, and 1 leave my sumptuous meals of imagination to descend right in the front-line defences of England and return home to cope with war-time rations once more.