DOING WITHOUT FIRES

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 99, 21 January 1943, Page 2

DOING WITHOUT FIRES

Cheerful Attitude Of British People The cheerful way iu which the people o£ Englund accept austerity living conditions is indicated in a letter from a We lington girl, Mrs. Oliver Chapman, now of Epping, to her mother, Mrs. A. Longmore. "We are asked to economize with fuel and though 1 have a big shed tilled with coal we are doiug without tires aud sit. in our dressing gowns with rugs anti ‘hotties’ to keep warm,’’ she said. ‘bo fur it has not been much Larddship, though one misses the cheeriness of a tire, specially with all the blackout. "Toward the end of the week one finds food a bit difficult. The meat usually lusts till Tuesday or Wednesday and then one has to shop in earliest. Today I went to my butcher first to ask for liver( not rationed), none; then to the pork butcher for rabbit, none; then to the fish shop, only awful flabby-looking dogfish or a piece of a huge tlatlish ; it looked more like a stingray, and 1 could face neither; then to another butcher, who sometimes has tripe, none. Eventually 1 saw two rabbits in a shop and obtained one, so you see shopping isn't all a bed of roses for the poor housewife.” To offset this, the writer explains that in common with others she and her husband have a nourishing garden. Marrows, beans, cabbages, peas, carrots, cauliflowers, spinach, and other things, all iu such profusion that they had reached the "giving away” stage. . A journey up to London was described, showing how every available piece of land is utilized for growing vegetables. it was many months since I bad been on the train by day and it was most luteiesting to see how things had changed. No longer were there lovely gardens ot flowers but instead neat rows ot vegetables and. crawling over garden walls, runner beans. , , , . “In some places where houses used to be also are neat rows of vegetables and in'places along the bank where the tram runs. Even in the squalid slum houses, where their bit of ground is the size of a pocket handkerchief, beans and cabbages and tomatoes were growing in window boxes.”