Shortages – then and now

In the UK today we’re suffering from some shortages. In most cases there isn’t an actual lack of goods but a lack of people to pick the crops and deliver the supplies. Some problems are caused by our new trading rules. Brexit has caused a few more. The pandemic has had its effect. There is also a general labour shortage because of an aging population. During World War II there was a shortage of labour because many of the men were fighting in the war.  Females took on traditional male roles, including truck and ambulance driving. Land girls worked on the farms. However when the men returned they had to hand back these positions. We’re tentatively inviting back the EU immigrants we’ve just rejected – and we’re not being very successful.   

Just before World War II there had been the great depression.  During that time there was enough of everything – if you could afford it.  In the US, as they joined World War II in 1941, food shortages started immediately.

Germans of a certain age – the parents of the war generation – were used to hoarding non-perishable food because of the 1920s’ hyperinflation, where they had to change their money into goods as quickly as possible. Rationing in Australia during World War II helped to curb inflation there.  

We have had panic buying of toilet rolls, flour, pasta and most recently petrol. Petrol was the first commodity to be rationed during World War II. All goods depend on petrol.  

Our supermarket shelves are looking emptier by the week. Fruit and vegetables during World War II were not rationed though there were shortages. Some were still imported, such as onions, tomatoes and more unusual fruits. People grew their own. Shall we have to do this again now?  Or roll up our sleeves and go and pick them? We take so much for granted now. My grandmother was a greengrocer and it was exciting when she had a huge box of bananas delivered. Now we eat bananas almost every day.

Most families these days do one big shop a week at the supermarket, or have goods delivered once a week. In the 1940s, when fewer people had fridges and domestic freezers were unheard of, people used to shop daily. There would be queues outside most shops. In the early days of our pandemic there were huge queues outside our supermarkets.        

We are now threatened with soaring energy bills which will lead to fuel poverty for many people. We in the UK get much of our electricity from France, supplied by their nuclear reactors. However, the main cable transporting this energy has broken and will take months to repair. We haven’t had enough wind lately to generate much electricity via our wind farms. In the 1940s there was a shortage of coal; people were only allowed warm water twice a week. This was particularly harsh in the cold winter of 1939-1940. Even in the 1950s, I remember bathwater being limited to five inches. I longed for a deep bubble bath like you saw in the TV ads and the glossy magazines. Will we be limiting ourselves soon? Or will our power showers still work?      

There was a shortage of clothing too during World War II. People were encouraged to “make do and mend”. We are now encouraged to do that but for slightly different reasons.  The fashion industry has a huge impact on the planet. Clothes manufacturers are now encouraged to consider and deal with the end–of- life of what they produce. The pandemic has made many of us limit our wardrobe and we are finding that we can manage with less. However, this impacts on the livelihoods of those who work in the fashion industry. During World War II there was generally a shortage of shoes.  Maybe we could go back to painting our legs if tights become a problem.          

There was a shortage of nurses in the US from the mid-1930s. The situation worsened during World War II as many started serving the military. It did not reverse as much as one would have expected in the 1950s; many did not return to their pre-war roles.  We currently have a shortage of nurses.  This is caused partly by poor morale generally, extra pressure that the pandemic has caused and because we are no longer recruiting from the EU.

So, there are parallels. On the whole, we’re probably not having it quite as bad as they did – yet.   

Image by Kevinsphotos from Pixabay 

Food

Food is so important in this novel. Its title suggests that nature’s ability to produce food for us is more important than whatever we humans might choose to quarrel about.

We often ask ourselves how could the Holocaust happen. Is food a clue? A terrible depression hit the world in the 1930s. It was particularly bad in Germany. Some of the Nazi cruelty towards the Jews involved deprivation of food.

1940 Weekend on the East Lancs Railway

This was fun. It usually is. It felt authentic. So many people were dressed the part – and very convincingly at that, that we were all back there. I was even wearing one of the vintage dresses I picked up at the same event last year. I picked up a beret to supplement my outfit. The stations were rigged out as well – windows were taped and a resistance-run French café was created from the shelter at Ramsbottom station.

Event details  

The full event takes place over this bank holiday weekend – 25, 26 and 17 May 2013.

Highlights for us included:

·         Paul Harper and daughter Natasha singing 40s favourites at Bury station.

Paul and Natasha Harper

·         Renewal of Vows at St Paul’s Church, Ramsbottom.

·         Listening to Katie Spitfire at Ramsbottom station.

·         Firepower action at Ramsbottom station.  

·         Spitfire and Hurricane fly past at Bury station  

Authenticity

Maybe some authenticity came in a conversation we had with another baby boomer couple. Note: the World War II generation is dying out. Those who were children born in the war or shortly after are the ones who remember though now it is second-hand. We all had ration books – for some items until as late as 1954. I remember children who went to school without shoes and the teacher asking if anyone had some wear left in any they had grown out of, and could this family have them. I didn’t feel poor when I was a child – after all we lived in a semi-detached council house that had a nice garden. My maternal grandmother and grandfather ran a greengrocer’s shop in an area of terraced houses, some of them back-to-back. They seemed poorer because of where they lived but were in fact richer; they were amongst the first to get a television and they went on touring holidays every year, staying in very nice hotels. We struggled to buy a few sweets or a bar of chocolate on a Friday night, though we did manage a fortnight at the seaside every year but only because we lived with my paternal grandmother so my mum could use for holidays all the money she’d saved towards putting a deposit on a house.  By the time I went to university in 1970, I’d buy a chocolate bar if I wanted to. No, we didn’t feel poor but we were certainly much worse off than most people today. Make do and mend still went on during the 1950s and the lady to whom we talked told us about the winter coats bought every couple of years that were passed down through seven daughters and then cut up to make a coat, leggings and a muff for the toddler.   

There was an exhibition of war time cooking, showing how people made the most of the small quantities of the items that were rationed and of the items that were more readily available. Eggless cakes go stale quickly, apparently. One made just yesterday, and fine then, was inedible today. I guess, though then it wasn’t a problem then: food was scarce and people working so hard that they got hungry – nothing would need to last overnight.  

Help with project

Did any of this help me with this project? Yes, it think it did. There were a few reminders of the details – the seamed stockings and in some cases the cold-tea stained legs with the eye-liner seam drawn on. Most of the women carried baskets.  Stations tended to be full of soldiers.    

And the dresses- oh the dresses. Yes, my young ladies now in their early 20s, dressed like that also when they met up again 1947. They had become smart young women by then.  

One of the greatest delights was the Ramsbottom War News, published by the Ramsbottom Heritage Society. This year it contained a collection of articles printed in the Ramsbottom Observer in 1942. Like The War Papers to which I referred often, so much of what life was like can be gleaned from the smaller articles and the advertising. A particular one caught my eye – an advert for cross children. It blamed the crossness on “a sluggish system clogged with sour waste matter” and claimed that this “evil” could be corrected with a good dose of California Syrup of Figs. If only! 

Selling the Ramsbottom News

Balancing Research Facts and Fiction

You have to do it right. You’ve got to make it all seem authentic, so you need to find out how things were at the time. The temptation can be, however, to try to squeeze every fact in. It’s also really quite difficult to decide whether that is what you are doing.

I’m still carrying on with the Hani thread, and Clara Lehrs is becoming feistier by the minute. I’m really getting to know this character well. That made confirming that she went to Treblinka yesterday all the more poignant.

In today’s writing alone I’ve had to consult:

the perpetual calendar

the timeline for 1939

my notes on food rationing

my notes on conscription for young German men during World War II.

I’ve also had to find a German food ration card.  

I hope I’ve also brought enough tension into the plot

It is so very hard to judge whether that balance of story and of setting is correct.

Still, I’m sharing some of this with a critique group tomorrow and possibly some more with another group nearer the end of the month.