Welcome to My World!

Nowadays my travels are limited but I keep busy with my Rotary club, fundraising for those in need on my Facebook site:- Moncton Auctions For Charity. Quilting, sewing, and of course my garden.

So as I start my 89th year I am still as busy as ever just in a different way.

Wanderlust has taken me all over this wonderful place we call our world with many adventures along the way. I hope you will enjoy some of my stories and photographs.

In the beginning... 

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I was a child of the war so my most formative years, certainly from 5 to 12, were the most restrictive years but I never felt deprived. It was what it was and we just kind of lived with it.

During the war, all garbage was collected for recycling and everyone had to put their garbage in the appropriate bins. Garbage was divided into seven different types so in a block of 7 houses one house would have paper, one tin, one food waste (for pig swill) ugh!

Our house had rags and as my mother was a costume designer for the  Ballet she needed many odds and ends. So every day it was my job was to go down to the bin and go through it and see if there was anything with buttons or zippers or sequins or anything like that.
 
Remember I was only about six years old but every day I went down to the bin and dragged out the clothes looking for buttons, zippers, etc I would help cut off all the buttons and all the zippers and trimmings.
They were all very carefully saved in a big row of jars in the sewing room. It was a lot of work but as a child, I thought it was a lot of fun.
 
"Dig For Victory" was a big slogan. During the war, this meant that everybody had to dig up their lawns and their flowerbeds and plant vegetables. So we planted potatoes and we planted carrots and cabbage and turnips (god how I  hated turnip) and all those sturdy things that we could grow and eat. But that’s the way it was.

The second thing that happened was that there was a shortage of metal for ammunition so they came along and they cut down everybody’s wrought iron fences and gates.
My mother was very proud of her beautiful outside fences and gates. I think she cried for a week when they were taken away. It was awful because it did just leave little sticks as they cut them off and they got rusty and everything looks so sad.
 
 We "Dug For Victory" and we gave up our fences.
 
Kingston- upon-Hull is a big, very old city on the Humber River, close to the outer North Sea coast of England and it was a refuge for warships.


My father's factory was taking over for warship repairs so he did not go in the forces. He was however an air raid warden and every night he had to go around and make sure that everybody’s black-out curtains were in place, that no speck of light was showing anywhere. When the bombers came the sirens would go on and then he had to go and help put out the fires.

That was really hard for my mother and me sometimes and we missed him a lot because he was never with us during the air raids. I always slept under the stairs in the house on the main floor so my mother didn’t have to run upstairs and get me a case of an air raid. For several years I never slept in my bedroom It was more like a playroom.

Of course, everything was rationed and we had a coupon book for everything.  My favourite coupons were D coupons with a D coupon you could go and buy candy. I think I got two a month however my mother had a number of sisters who would come and visit and if I was very lucky they give me a D coupon and sixpence so I could run to the store and buy some candy.  It didn’t happen very often but it was a big event in my life when it did.

Eventually, the war ended and there were great celebrations. In our street, a huge bonfire was lit in the middle of the road and people ran out with the black-out curtains and all kinds of other things. Tables were set up and people shared food.  There wasn’t a lot of food as we were still rationed but we shared what we had. The War Was Over!barbara

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