70 Years ago Today.

[j.c.d.]

70 years ago, give or take a day a Nun Teacher walked into our Junior School classroom at Mt. St. Mary's Richmond Hill and said "Children the War is over". we were then sent home and although we had had one lot of bombs drop nearby the School it really did not seem to mean much.
When I got off of the Tram at South Farm Road, Gipton my brother and I saw all the people in the street. the talk of a street party certainly our attention as we were always hungry and the following day from somewhere tables appeared in the middle of the road and my Mother sent us off to the Do with a cup each, spoon tied to the handle with string and a stern warning not to lose either of them. obviously all the Mothers must have baked overnight as there were buns and jam tarts aplenty. some of the adults were stood around singing to an accordion player but we were much too busy tucking in to the grub. at Over the weekend there was lots of singing and dancing around bon fires in most of the streets. I remember being told that we did not have to go any more into my Grandmothers Air Raid Shelter on certain nights as it was brick built, extremely cold, damp and had a most awful smell.

[Leodian]

It's good to hear j.c.d. of your Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) recollection as I suspect many personal recollections of that and WW2 in general are slowly being forgotten/lost with the passage of time where there is no written and/or verbal record.

[BLAKEY]

We lived in Ilkley at that time, and I remember that despite rationing etc Woolworth's had just begun to stock ice cream again. It was "Midland Counties" and was sold from a fridge near the lower entrance in the Brooks Street store in Ilkley. I was only eight years old but somehow came by enough money to buy a family block, price tenpence (about 4p in today's coinage.) It was encased in a plain cardboard carton and I made short work of scoffing the lot before arriving home half a mile away - obviously the poor quality of the stuff and the speed I wolfed it down took their toll, and I was very very poorly the rest of the evening. Incidentally I'm sure we are all spoilt for choice these days as I recall the "ice cream" being insipid and having very little taste and the consistency of a block of soft room temperature lard. Mum and Dad must have been too patrotic to allow any leeway though, and I spent the rest of VE Day sitting up in bed waving a small Union Jack !!

[j.c.d.]

Your mention of Ice cream reminds me that even during the war in Leeds market you could occasionally get one from Granelli's stall but out of town it was very rare to see Ice cream owing to the rationing. just once in a while the Elderado ice cream man showed up in Harehills park he was nearly lynched such was the demand.
What I find hard nowadays is getting over to my Grandkids just how things were at that time, the streets were free of any rubbish as paper was scarce and kind of scrap was sent for the "War Effort". School, Parks and some Public buildings were stripped of their metal railings for scrap iron, if we were lucky enough to get a cycle wheel as a toy it certainly would not have had a tyre on it. I recall that my Grandmother who worked at Sumrie's tailoring factory on York Road managed to get my brother and I two army buttons with the regimental badge on them as the factory made Army
uniforms. we were the envy of our pals as toys were just not available unless you had quite a bit of money.
As our Air raid shelter in the back garden was below ground level it was unusable so if the sirens sounded out at night the family would get up, dress and go round to my Grandmothers shelter. this was brick built about the size of a house garage and as I said earlier, cold and damp. any blankets etc left inside were damp or wet within a day. what good being in a brick and concrete block wold have been in the event of a bomb dropping on it I really don't know.
As the only contact with bombing we ever had was when Marsh Lane Railway area was attacked and one bomb landed on Old Park, Richmond Hill
which left a crater where we played football and also blew out our school windows, giving us a weeks holiday.

[j.c.d.]

IN the 1940s the most prized possession in our household was the Ration book. though we lived in the newly built estate of Gipton my Mother got the family meat ration at a Butchers in York Place near the Market. in return for her giving him regular business he would let us have slightly more than the weekly allowance. very welcome in those food shortage times. the only thing was we had to queue up for most of Saturday morning. My Mother worked at Marks and Spencers during the war and she used to go out every lunch hour around the shops looking for a queue as that usually meant there was something special had just arrived. one day at Scarr's ironmongers she waited and got an enamel bucket, sometimes the shop sold out of whatever they had before you got to the front but that was the way it was. she would join a queue and then ask someone what was it we are queuing for. because of such severe shortages folks were just glad to get anything going.
My sister had a pen friend in the U.S.A. and once in 1942 she sent us a food parcel. can't remember just what was in it except that I know it had dried egg powder which was manna from heaven as fresh eggs were a thing so rare. when cooked it was like an omelette.