"I can remember my uncle who was stationed in Surrey for a time bringing us a chicken a farmer had given him, it was delicious. We did a lot of bartering with friends. Some of us were lucky enough to have relations with eggs. My Grandmother kept chickens & ducks in her back garden & when she was bombed out the neighbourhood had fried chicken & ducks as the poor things were blown to pieces....It still amazes me that with the limited ingredients mothers managed to put reasonable meals on the table. Sometimes it didn’t do to ask what the ingredients were!"

"Instead of sweets we had lemonade powder or cocoa powder mixed with a tiny amount of sugar, which was put into a saucer. We dabbed our fingers in it!!"

" My Mother bottled fruit in Kilner jars, eg plums. Runner beans were sliced and salted. My father kept an allotment grew potatoes swore by “Arran Pilot”. Had a shed full of potatoes in hessian sacks, we used to pinch carrots and peas. My mother kept chickens; my grandfather kept geese in the tennis courts

Many people kept pigs in the back garden fed on kitchen scraps. One Saturday morning the Latin lesson was interrupted by the squeals of a pig being slaughtered. At break we saw it strung up by its back legs"

"Sweet rations were 2oz a week. My favourite was Devon Cream toffee. We had liquorice wood and Victory V cough lozenges, both off ration as substitutes"

" The rationing continued for some time after the end of the war. It ended about 1955 in Churchill’s second premiership. Fuel was rationed, especially in the bad winter of 1947. We used to get coke from the gasworks and wood off-cuts from the sawmill with our trolleys. "

"Brought a peach back for my daughter, she had never seen much fruit. When I gave it to her she threw it on the floor thinking it was a ball. "