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Not worth mentioning? I only found out by accident that it is today.
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>> Not worth mentioning?
>>
Real celebrations
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AC2vzAA5N8
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I remember it. I was 6. My mother cried, my father cursed the Nazis. I couldn't understand why they weren't more pleased. But of course they still had the Pacific war to worry about, something I didn't realise at the time.
In the afternoon, the centre of Bath filled with jubilant crowds climbing lamp posts, cheering, singing and riding on the running boards of moving cars. That was more like it! Really though everyone was knackered and wartime austerity lasted for some time, until the early fifties.
It took me quite a while to master the distinction between Germans and Nazis, and I have a feeling some people older than me never really did.
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I have read there was a big row with the Russians because we finished the war a day earlier than them. Everyone was supposed to start celebrating at the same time, but word got out and people had already started dancing in the fountains. So they had to have another official signing the next day to pacify Stalin.
Incidentally AC it's always said that the real austerity only started after the war, when new rationing started of things that hadn't even been rationed before. Then 1947 was the coldest winter on record, coal stocks froze solid, and the miners went on strike. Rationing didn't finally end, I think, until 1955.
I do remember my mother using ration coupons, and being fed disgusting stuff called National Dried Milk.
I still have my Identity Card issued in 1949, complete with warning that I must be prepared to show it at any time.
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National Dried Milk was state supplied baby feed into the sixties . White tins with a blue checked pattern.
Both my parents and Mrs B's had cans galore used to store stuff in garage or garden shed until well into the eighties.
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Nice fillum....but why the Boche music ? No-one got a Vaughan-Williams or Elgar record ?
I remember going with me ole granma to the Co-op to get stuff using coupons, She died in '51.
Sweets and bacon were scarce, I think.
Ted
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>> it's always said that the real austerity only started after the war, when new rationing started of things that hadn't even been rationed before.
That may always be said, but it was just more of the same. I didn't really notice wartime austerity because I couldn't remember anything else, but the adults certainly did. No one has mentioned powdered eggs, or the minute rations of butter and sugar. Clothes were rationed too. Adult women were obsessed with stockings and sucked up to Americans who could get anything.
It is also often said, on the other hand, that my generation is healthier than subsequent ones thanks to ministry of food concentrated orange juice and cod liver oil, coupled with a relatively simple, unprocessed diet with lots of porridge, cabbage and brown bread. We didn't starve like the rest of Europe. But we were certainly ready for the end of sweet rationing in the fifties.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Wed 8 May 13 at 23:58
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If peeps followed the wartime diet, there'd be a tad less obesity and type 2 diabetes about.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3847041.stm
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>> If peeps followed the wartime diet,
>>
I do - I love cod-liver oil. I can see why people hate it, but for me it's one of those tastes that break through the initial unpleasantness and become very more-ish.
Like ginger, red wine, and cough mixture.
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I think we had Halibut liver oil with our milk in school, Shark liver oil is mucho good, I hear.
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>> Shark liver oil is mucho good, I hear.
For you, Dog, maybe. For the sharks, not so much.
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I didn't pick up anything about the significance of the day from the news media. They seemed to be obsessed about some football bloke. As regards rationing, sweets had to be re-rationed when sudden demand exceeded supply. There were still food shortages in 1953 when, from abroad, I was able to get food parcels sent to my family, diverted from the export allocation.
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"Like ginger, red wine, and cough mixture."
Quite a cocktail that!
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>>Adult women were obsessed with stockings and sucked up to Americans who could get anything.
Er... yes, and more. In common with other Army cadets, I sometimes did night guard duties in local drill halls, watching over some exraordinary, usless old military hardware (has anyone else ever seen a Smith Gun? or a Northover Projector?). En route I passed two large air raid shelters and sometimes peeped in. The occasional illumination from a match or cigarette lighter revealed American uniforms in orgy scenes resembling those excessively detailed respresenations of Hell found in medieval paintings.
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>> ministry of food concentrated orange juice
Came in a rectangular bottle IIRC. There was the stuff the milkman used to deliver too.
Nothing since matches either for taste.
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Worth watching if you have 50 minutes to spare: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRtxdO_lJVw
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8th May is a bank holiday in France and there are commemoration ceremonies. It rained.
Today (May 9) is also a bank holiday here this year - the moveable Feast of Ascension I'm told. It's raining.
Being France, many people will have a 'pont' or bridge - ie take Friday off as well to lengthen the weekend. No wonder Mrs Merkel loses patience.
My father was in the 'Forgotten' 14th Army in Burma, so August 1945 meant more than May.
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VE Day - henry k
