NOW ITS LIKE LOOKING THROUGH A WINDOW
by Mary Morgan
Chapter 1 page 2
AFTER THE WAR
My next early memory, which always seemed much happier in my mind,
would be when I was about seven years old and my mother coming upstairs
to wake me up. It was Saturday morning, I can even remember her sitting
me on the table in the only back room we all shared, behind the shop.
The fire was lit and the room was warm. I can even see her taking my
underwear down from the wire line we had across the 'mantelpiece' over
the black fire grate. White long sleeved vest, white 'liberty bodice'
dark green knickers and long black knitted stockings that were kept up
with garters at the top of my legs - and which I knew would be pulled up
and tucked into those garters a million times that day before I took
them off again.
After I was dressed my mother took me into the shop and behind the
counter where she kept all the foodstuffs that you needed "ration"
coupons for before you could buy them - like eggs, oranges, etc. There
was a long brick red box, which I had seen being carried into the shop
just the day before. On the front it had the name 'Fyffes' and another
word I had never seen or had any idea what it meant - Bananas!
My mother opened the box and I can remember the lovely smell and the
golden yellow of the huge hands of bananas packed in straw in a single
row. Upon asking her what they were, she broke one of the bananas off
one of the hands and started to pull down the three sections of peel,
and in answer to my question she then broke a piece off and asked me if
I wanted to taste it.
WELL! Big deal! I didn't much like bananas, whatever they were and I
don't know to this day who was the most disappointed, my mother because
I had spoilt her surprise - or me.
This must have been towards the end of the war when all the things I
had missed out on up till then started to re-appear in the shops again.
All the foodstuffs and necessities that I take for granted so much today
- just were not around when I was that age, due to the ships that were
used to bring them from other countries, being blown up and sunk by the
enemy - in the seas around England.
