Are we facing a return to rationing?
In 1947, when I was 10 years old and my brother was still in his carry cot, our father gathered together all the petrol ration coupons he’d been saving for months and drove us in his old Austin 16, registered number FHK 406, to visit friends in the village of Cudworth in County Durham.
It was a tremendous undertaking and the furthest I’d ever been from home in Norfolk. There were no dual carriageways – just inadequate main roads still in need of repair after the Second World War. And yes, before we reached Kings Lynn I really did ask: “Are we nearly there yet?”
The trip was memorable for a number of reasons; not least that it included a visit down a coal mine for my father and me.
I remember being frightened but thrilled as the cage dropped like a stone into the mine shaft and seemed to continue forever. When it eventually stopped, the first thing we noticed was the smell of horses. For there, at the bottom was the underground stable for dozens of pit ponies. To our surprise they looked contented and well fed but, of course, they knew no other life since being sent down the mine as youngsters.
Another memory, apart from the filthy sweat-streaked miners and their working conditions, was when our guide, my parent’s friend, said: “Let’s pause and put out the Davey lamps on our safety helmets so you can experience real darkness.”
I shall never forget it. It was so intense you could almost feel it and it made me appreciate the human cost of the coal we use for warmth and power ever since.
A few days later, as we prepared to drive home, we called at a grocery store to say goodbye to other friends who owned the shop. Not wishing to disrupt customers, the shopkeeper invited us into his store room at the back. And there, among his stocks, were several hundredweight hessian bags of sugar marked “Cantley Sugar Factory”, where our beet have always been processed.
My father laughed and said: “I reckon I grew some of that, and yet back home we have to queue up for our ration.”
“Would you like a bag to take home?” asked the shopkeeper. To which my mother, a very upright woman, assuming he meant a couple of pounds, said: “That would be lovely. But I haven’t brought our ration books.”
“That’s OK,” said the shopkeeper. “I’ve got plenty.” And he wheeled out a hundredweight bag on a sack barrow and put it in the car.
The journey home was even more memorable. The sugar was on the back seat of the car with my brother in his carry-cot on top to hide it from prying eyes. And every time we passed a policeman, mother was convinced we would be arrested.
Needless to say we weren’t, but the agonies of guilt she went through on that journey and each time she used a pound or two of the sugar to make jam or whatever, gave me an early lesson that breaking the law should be avoided.
Of course, such experiences will never be repeated. Motor fuel will never again be limited by government-issued permits; sugar and other foods will never again be rationed, with shopkeepers having to tear out little squares from a book for every transaction. And consumers will never again risk arrest if they dare to stray outside the system.
Or will they? Read next week’s column for more on this theme.
David Richardson farms about 400ha (1,000 acres) of arable land near Norwich in Norfolk in partnership with his wife, Lorna. His son, Rob, is farm manager.
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