|
 | |  | |
Don McDouall was evacuated from London during World War II when he was five years old. He was sent to the small country village of East Hanney to live with Grans and Grampy at a house called Tamarisk. He now lives in Australia.
Both of us boys were allocated chores that had to be done daily. Others were done on specific days of the week. Emptying 'po's' was one such chore. Us kids piddled in tin or enamel chamber pots, once we had gone to bed for the night. The grownups used large china chamber pots to urinate in. Each 'po' had a large single handle like a giant cup.
These chamber pots were heavy when they were empty, but when full of urine I could scarcely pick one up let alone carry such an article. Walking down a flight of stairs, opening and closing doors plus the stench of ammonia drifting up ones nostrils made it nigh impossible for me to carry such heavy objects without spilling much of the contents.
Many times the 'pee' would slosh over the sides onto my legs, at times filling my boots. At holiday times, when Grans had visitors I would have to carry as many as six of these huge po's brimful with urine from the bedrooms, down the stairs and out of the house, then empty them onto the veggie garden.
I would then have to wash each po out and dry it. Then trundle the lot back upstairs and put the chamber pots back under the beds. Eventually following up my trails of spilt urine with a bucket and cloth!
Other chores that had to be done on a daily basis were tasks such as feeding the chickens. They got corn in the mornings, but in the afternoon I would boil up all the left over food scraps and potato peelings in an old saucepan. Then added to this while it was still hot was bran and pollard. This was fed to the chickens while still piping hot. It used to smell pretty good! If no one was looking I would eat it too as I was always hungry!
On Saturday mornings as there was no school there would be extra chores for Roy and me. Mine was such as having to 'ruddle' the toilet floor, scrub the front steps, clean the kitchen window and muck the chicken shed out. Roy had similar tasks.
Very often both of us would raid the rubbish bins for something to eat going to school. A favourite pastime of mine was to steal 'condemned' food from Mr Walters pig farm, in East Hanney! The farm would receive lorry loads of food that was all stamped 'Not fit for human consumption'. Usually it was food such as bread with black mould growing all over it. But quite a lot of the food was condemned tinned food such as condensed milk.
Sometimes I would steal a packet of cough sweets from the local shop when the shopkeeper wasn't looking. Roy would climb upon to the bakers roof and lower me head first down to where the bread sat cooling on a long shelf and I would pinch a small round loaf.
We would push the cough sweets into the loaf one by one, all over it. The loaf would be hot so its heat would melt the sweets and would soak into the bread. We would then scurry back to Hermans old barn with the hot sweet filled loaf and have a feast!
My most vivid memories of this era of my life were being always hungry.
| |  | |  |
To add a comment you must first login or join for free, up in the top left corner.
|
|
