Jellied Eels and Zeppelins by Sue Taylor Page B

We’d put it into a huge coal-fired boiler and boiled it all up, and then it went into a massive tank as big as my table. When cooked, we chopped it up and, while it was cooking, oh dear, did those pigs holler! They smelt it and loved it. And they didn’t ‘alf do well on it!
    When they (
The Board of Agriculture
) wouldn’t let farmers make their own pigswill, because of the risk of disease, we used to buy in special dried food from the very old established firm, Marriage’s of Chelmsford (
W.& H. Marriage & Sons Ltd. established in 1824
).
    When we had chickens before the war in the back garden, we gave them corn in the afternoons and middlings in the morning, nice and hot, to make them lay well.
    I used to pull ‘em (
the chickens and turkeys
) standing out in the conservatory in the bitter cold, while Joe sat in front of the fire ‘cos he didn’t like the smell! A van used to come a few days before Christmas to take the birds alive and, after they were killed and plucked, I had to pull them (
remove the giblets
). My fingers would turn blue with cold sometimes when the birds were frozen during the winter. The first time, I tried to pluck them myself and stayed out in the shed all night. But it was too much for me, so after that, the dead birds were put into a steam machine to remove all the feathers. Good idea that was.
    All the dead poultry used to come back here. We would hang them in the shed and that’s how they used to get frozen, if it was a cold night. I weighed ‘em - some people wanted a small one, others a big one - and labelled ‘em and charged half a crown for pulling ‘em. Some of our customers didn’t want their chicken or turkey pulled so I marked those to make sure that I got that right - ‘Pulled’ or ‘Not pulled’, see. We mostly received orders for birds at Christmas time.
    I would also load the basket of my bicycle with dead and skinned rabbits and take them into Brentwood to sell. I may not have always liked rearing these animals for slaughter, but it was our living. Joe wanted to be his own guvnor, so I just got on with it.
    But times were hard then. When people came in for a cup of tea, I worried about how far my quarter of tea was going to stretch. You know what I used to have to do when they’d all gone? I drained the teapots, put all the dregs on a tin tray, put the tray on the stove to dry out the leaves and use them again. I couldn’t afford to buy another quarter of tea. That went on for years before I got my pension. I never ‘ad no electric kettle or anything. I always boiled up the kettle on the Aga stove, which I bought from Scotland for £37 in 1952.
    I had to make do with £2 a week. As well as a quarter of tea, I bought 2 lbs of sugar, as my chap always liked two teaspoons of sugar in his cup of tea and would not go without. I cooked myself a small dinner and gave him a larger one. Some days, I never had a dinner at all, but would always have a little one on a Sunday. I would have whatever I could find. Sometimes, it would just be a slice of bread and jam. I baked my own bread, because it was cheaper and used to make about 16 lbs of damson jam, which would last us all through the winter.
    When Joe and a friend used to collect the swill for the pigs at closing time in a horse and cart, the baker would sometimes fill up the egg basket with the cakes from his shop window that he hadn’t sold that day, so I saved a bit of money then. I would pick out the best ones for us and the rest would be given to the pigs.
    I used to earn £1 for doing four hours cleaning at a shop, but packed that up when Mum got ill. After she died, I got another job cleaning for a lady, who had arthritis. I used to earn £1 for perming her hair too and I earnt a little more from hairdressing for the neighbours. When we had the phone put on, I paid for all my own calls and used to save for one pair of stockings a month.
    We couldn’t afford a lot, so when I needed to have my teeth out, ‘cos I