It was not until 1948, when I was 22 years old and stationed in Cyprus that I ate my first olive. I was attending a cocktail party in the home of Mr Magubgub, a respected antiquary and authority on the ancient Roman town of Salamis. He chuckled at my obvious dislike of the fruit and went on to tell me all there was to know about olives. I persevered until I became used to the taste and have loved them ever since.
The first time I saw a chilli was when I was 21 years of age. I was staying in a hotel in Maidstone close to a hospital where my girl friend was having her appendix removed. The waiter brought around a trolley with a selection of salad items; on the middle tray was a red thing about three inches long. Not knowing what it was, I cut it in half and popped one end in my mouth. I was convulsed with chilli-burn and such a fit of coughing that the combined resources of the dining room staff were needed to evacuate me to a less public place.
Another example of my blossoming awareness of exotic foodstuff was my introduction to smoked salmon. What is now a common-place item on supermarket shelves was, in my youth, as remote as Beluga caviar. The apogée of smoked fish, as far as I was concerned, was a kipper.
It was in 1952, when I was serving in Malaya with the 3rd Battalion King's African Rifles. My commanding officer ordered me to get some smoked salmon for a lunch party for the Commander-in-Chief, Far East Land Forces - General Sir Somebody-or-other. Salmon, smoked or otherwise, was an unlikely first course for a VIP lunch in the remote area of Central Pahang where we operated and was made even more so by the way I served it - like steaks. The commanding officer was furious but the General was highly amused, and my gaff contributed to a memorable visit.
I tell these stories about myself because it is almost beyond the comprehension of those who were born in the '60s' onwards to know what living conditions were like during the war years and into the '50s'. Rationing of food was not abandoned until 1953 and a year later television reached the provinces. Compulsory national service of two years in the Armed Forces did not end until 1963 while supermarkets and package holidays did not make an appearance until well into the '60s'.
I was nearly 13 when the second world war broke out and I lived a comfortable life in No. 38 Bron Awelon, Barry, South Wales with my parents who, I suppose, were graded 'middle-class'. My parents did not have a car, but they owned their house and they sent me as a day-boy to Monkton House public school in Cardiff (where my paternal Grandfather was educated in the '1880s'. It was then called Shewbrook's College). The food we ate at home was plain but nourishing. It was based mainly on recipes from Westmorland, where my mother was born. She was always a plump woman and the word 'diet' never entered her vocabulary.
Even though food was rationed during the war, we never seemed to go short. For this we had to thank the milkman who called on us every morning at eight o'clock. He used to leave Ford Farm, Llancarfan in the Vale of Glamorgan at about 5am and drive his horse and cart about 12 miles before he reached the Barry Garden Suburb. His mother was a lazy woman who refused to get up and give him his breakfast (it was most probably too early for him anyway). My mother, guided by her maternal instincts and recognising an opportunity to gain extra rations, used to provide a man-size breakfast for Edward which usually comprised: porridge, eggs and bacon, fried bread, toast and marmalade. He supplied much of the food plus lots of other things like butter, cream and guinea fowl. The rub came each Friday when he presented the bill. In addition to milk and eggs, he charged for all the other items he brought from the farm, which included the food he had eaten himself. My mother was sharp as far as money was concerned and so was Edward. Both recognised a bargain when they saw one.
My father grew his own vegetables on an allotment south of Porth y Castell about 300 yards from the house. He and I used to carry buckets of water, when required, as none was laid on. During the summer, we were self-sufficient in greens, root crops, tomatoes and soft fruits.
Edward Williams, the milkman, was married during the war and lived in Ty-Newydd Farm not far from the present Cardiff (Wales) Airport. He continued to supply my mother with extra food and he let my father have two furrows in one of his fields. Edward sowed potatoes for us and my father and I attended to them during the growing phase. When they were ready to harvest, we dug them up and put them in sacks which Edward kept in one of his barns. In return, my father and I helped with the cereal harvest.
Wheat threshing, in those days, was a combined operation involving neighbouring farmers who took it in turn to help each other when the threshing machine visited their area. Nowadays, the combine harvester is operated by one or two men (or women) and the whole process takes place on the field where the crop is grown. Gone is the sight, sound and smell of the steam engine and the chatter of the threshing machine munching its way through countless stooks of wheat fed from an adjacent horse-drawn wagon. Gone also are the restful interludes to quench ones thirst on jugs of home made lemonade, wine and cider.
My mother's contribution to these great country gatherings was helping to prepare food for the men. I remember one occasion when we stayed at Ford Farm for a few days during the harvest. As I have stated previously, Edward's mother was a lazy person and did nothing other than provide food for the other women to cook. My mother was aghast to find one day that only tinned tomatoes and boiled potatoes were available. However, that meal stands out in my mind as one of the best I have ever eaten, but my mother used to shudder at the memory.
My father and I used to catch fish in the sea, but this was never something we relied on. My mother used to complain when she bought a pair of herrings for my father to use as bait. He rarely returned with the equivalent weight in fish and it would have been easier and cheaper, as far as she was concerned, to have eaten the herrings.
During the summer, I would sometimes lay a long line of baited hooks at the extremity of low tide. Twelve hours later, during the night, whatever had been caught was revealed but, as nobody was about at that time, it was another twelve hours before the line was revealed again. I used to catch a considerable amount of fish this way but as we (and most other people in the neighourhood) did not have a refrigerator, I had to give most of it away.
There was only one time of year when we could eat mushrooms and that was in the autumn. My father and I used to go to Porthkerry Park and climb to the top of a steep hill we called 'The Mountain'. A field at the top was a great spot for mushrooms and we used to bring them back inside my father's raincoat. We collected so many that, once again, we had to give them away.
My mother used to bottle summer and autumn fruits in Kilner jars. The fruit was boiled inside the jars which had spring clips and rubber seals. Once they had cooled, they were hermetically sealed and would keep throughout the winter.
My parents made country wines using huge earthen-ware pots with screw tops. Elder flower and elder berry were the favourite ingredients but parsnip, beetroot, potato and wheat were also used to make some delicious wines. I remember being woken one night by a huge explosion. I thought it was a German bomb, but it was one of the earthen-ware pots. The lid should not have been screwed down while fermentation was taking place, but my father had done just that, and the pot exploded. Chunks of pottery were embedded in the ceiling and my mother was not amused.
The Merchant Navy was our life-line during the war but luxury items were cut to the bone. The only fruit we saw from overseas were oranges.
I remember one occasion when a ship was blown up by a mine in the Bristol Channel. The following day the Pebble Beach at Cold Knap, Barry was covered in crates of oranges. Edward Williams, the farmer, opened a crate and tasted one - it was delicious. He picked up an unopened crate and carried it back to his cart which he had left, with the horse, by the viaduct in Porthkerry Park. When he got the crate home he found that the contents were 'marmalade' oranges (sour) and, as sugar was rationed, they were useless. By the time he returned to the beach to collect the crate he had opened, there was nothing left!
Rabbits were plentiful and were 'off-ration' in butchers' shops. Lots of people put down snares, but we never did - although, once, I found a dead rabbit in a snare on the Cliff fields. It was still warm so I slipped it into my coat pocket and took it home. On the way, I met the old man who I knew laid snares and I tried to conceal the bulge in my pocket. He used to work the allotment next to ours and on the following day he told my father he knew who had 'nicked' his rabbit. My father was averse to lying and he made a poor job of trying to defend me.
My father was not usually squeamish but once he saw the white fur of a tame rabbit that my mother had ordered from Edward sticking out from underneath a blanket in the shed. He refused to eat it and my mother, from then on, had to satisfy him that the rabbits she bought were wild ones. When she could not get whole carcasses, she often used to buy rabbit heads which she would boil and give us three or four each.
Offal such as liver, kidneys, brains, tripe and sweet-breads, all of which we loved, were not rationed but you had to know the butcher well enough to be among those who received 'under the counter' items. Sausages, which contained offal were also hidden 'under the counter'. Corporal Jones in "DAD'S ARMY' plays the part of a war-time butcher to a tee.
Unless you bred your own chickens or were lucky, like us, to have a friendly farmer, a plump whole chicken was an expensive item reserved for very special occasions. My mother used to buy 'boilers', occasionally, which she casseroled. These were birds that had come to the end of their egg-laying days and would have been too tough to eat any other way.
There was no such thing as vegetable oil. Dripping, or suet, was sold by the butcher and the chips in which they were made were far superior to the bland products that are the norm these days. My mother used to give me dripping sandwiches as a snack and another favourite of hers from her childhood were 'sugar shags' - brown bread, butter and sugar. It sounds revolting by today's standards, but I loved them.
Another favourite was my mother's version of bread and butter pudding. Not the light-as-a-feather concoctions you read about in the gourmet cookery books, but brown bread laced with treacle or golden syrup, eggs, butter and dried fruit. When I joined the Army in 1944, I asked her to send me one. It arrived in a biscuit tin and was devoured the same day by me and the other five recruits who shared the hut. I was the most popular member of the sextet and was elevated to greater heights every time another biscuit box arrived.
Ice-cream was something you ate in the summer. Few people had refrigerators before and during the war and, as there was a shortage of sugar, ice-cream was a luxury. A boy used to come around the neighbourhood where we lived selling Wall's products. He pedalled a tricycle with an enormous ice box on the front which contained Snow-Fruit and Snow-Cream in triangular shaped cardboard sleeves. If I and my friends saw him pushing his load up-hill, we would help him in exchange for an iced lolly. But when he had sold his cargo, we would envy him as he free-wheeled at enormous speed down two steep hills to Barry Town for a refill. Snow-Fruit was just frozen coloured water and Snow-Cream was marginally more like real ice cream.
Once a week a Thomas and Evans's van from Porth in the Rhondda Valley used to deliver lemonade and other soft drinks. My mother used to buy two flagons of dandelion and burdock. There was a hefty deposit on the bottles, which were fitted with metal spring-clips. No champagne cork ever made a more satisfying sound than one of these bottles when the clip was released.
We had an Irish terrier called Paddy. He never went short of food as there was a shop in Barry Docks that sold meat 'unfit for human consumption'. It was horse meat in the main, stained with purple dye but I expect the odd cow that died of natural causes found its way into the shop as well. My mother used to boil it for the dog and the smell was mouth-watering. I understood at an early age why French people like horse-meat.
Whale factory-ships used to berth in Barry Docks with their cargoes of whale oil from the South Atlantic. Whale meat was also available but my mother was never tempted to buy any.
During my school-days in Cardiff, I used to have lunch in a 'British Restaurant'. It was run by the Women's Voluntary Service and the food they served - certainly the one in Cardiff, was awful. As far as I can remember, it was stew every day with greens and root vegetables such as turnips, swedes and carrots and a small piece of meat swimming around, if you could find it. Sometimes, even now, if I smell potatoes being cooked in big tubs, I recognise the smell that 'greeted me' in the British Restaurant.
We never went out for a meal during the war and, as I was under 18 until I joined the Army at the end of 1944, I never went into a pub. Pubs in those days were for men to drink ale which was not always available due to the shortage of sugar. Women rarely entered and children - never. The nearest I got to a pub was 'The Fox and Hounds' in Llancarfan. It was during one of our visits to Ford Farm and I can remember my father going inside and bringing out some lemonade for my mother and me. Alan Cobham's Air Circus was performing just outside the village and we watched him looping-the-loop.
My mother did most of her shopping in Mr Bembridge's Barry Garden Suburb Stores. It was what we would call a 'corner shop' these days being only five minutes walk from where we lived at 38, Bron Awelon. The groceries were delivered by a young lad on a bicycle - rather like a 'chopper' that my son, Richard, rode as a ten-year-old. Big wheel at the back, a small one in front with a huge wicker basket on top. Edith James, across the road, used to shop in the Co-operative Stores, about ten minutes walk away in Cambridge Street. She used to try and get my mother to go there and she explained the advantage of the dividend (or 'divi') scheme - which made buying food cheaper. There was a certain amount of 'snobbery' about this. The road below us was called Tan-y-Fron and that was where the Great Western Railway employees lived. My mother would not have been seen dead shopping with them.
Johnny Yeandle, the butcher - who had a shop in Cambridge Street, was, according to him, the adopted son of Stan Yeandle, who founded the business, but the likeness between him and the senior Yeandle did not fool anyone. They both had heads like footballs, florid complexions and voices like fog-horns. In about 1927, Stan Yeandle shot Pete, our wire haired fox-terrier and my parents severed relations with him. It was Pete's custom to call on his boy-friend, a cocker spaniel, each morning and both would hunt rabbits on the Cliff fields. Neither of them chased sheep but, as Stan Yeandle had lost a number of his flock to killer dogs, he did not give Pete and his friend the benefit of any doubt when he saw them in his field one day.
When Stan died and his son took over the business, my mother resumed buying meat from him. We never had expensive joints such as: rib of beef, shoulder of lamb and leg of pork. Instead, my mother would buy: flank of beef, shin of beef and ox-tail. A meal of roast lamb was always 'breast of lamb' and pork meals were either belly pork, pigs trotters or boiled bacon. When I was serving in the Army overseas for six years from 1948-54, I used to dream about my mother's food. When I returned, I couldn't wait for her to produce the old favourites - and they were just as delicious then as they always had been.
I thought I was worldly wise as far as foreign food was concerned and I attempted to make a curry for my parents - a dish that was virtually unknown in this country in 1954. It didn't turn out as well as I expected, so my mother had a go. What she made was, essentially, a beef casserole with added curry powder - but the taste was superb. It was the first curry my mother made and she was surprised how well it was received by my father and me. It became a favourite with all three of us.
Nesta (my wife) and I, with our son and daughter are a food-loving family. There is nothing more we enjoy than all 'mucking in' together in the kitchen. Some of the meals I enjoyed in my youth are still among my favourites, but time has moved on and I'm glad to be a reasonably healthy 85 year old (2011) enjoying all the good things now freely available in super-markets, town and village stores, pubs and restaurants.
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