Post war Austerity

The extremely cold winter of 1947, the coldest since 1740, meant that heating was a constant problem. Our new bungalow did have central, heating, not exactly a system merely a location, a miniscule fireplace 'centrally' positioned in the lounge. It was fitting in a way, that it was miniscule, as it could adequately handle our miniscule allotment of coal, a very rationed commodity during this period of austerity. My father, resourceful as ever laboured to resolve the situation and made an electric fire from a Peake Freans biscuit tin and electric iron filaments but there was no substitute for coal. Our meagre ration of coal was augmented each week by a bag of 'Coke' a form of solid fuel which unfortunately had to be collected. I dreaded Saturdays as I had to head off with my bicycle trudging through the snow to the gas works at Windsor Road on the opposite side of the town. This meant leaving the house at six thirty in the morning so that I could be back in time to dash off to the Gaumont cinema for Saturday morning matinee. Sometimes I would meet my Dad coming home after night shift at High Duty Alloys. On arrival at the gas works one joined a long line of shivering people standing below the huge gasometer, their frozen breathe hanging in the air. It was a Kafkaesque scene as we shuffled slowly forward until eventually coming to the scales where a jute sack was placed upon it, two shillings and sixpence changed hands and a workman filled it up with a hundredweight of sulphurous smelling coke and heaved it on to my crossbar. Then the fun began, the journey back to Abbeydale estate some three miles away was a nightmare, stumbling and slipping on snow and ice heaving the sack back on to the crossbar with frozen hands when it slid off. It developed into a titanic struggle, spindly legged youth versus mute brute with the dead weight of a corpse. It was on these trips that I graduated in swearing.

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