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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think that if asked to go back WWII style rationing, we'd never cope?

207 replies

CogitoErgoSometimes · 18/08/2011 16:29

Not that it's a seriously likely thing to happen, more a reflection of how spoilt we are by the 24/7 disposable consumer-goods culture, even in relatively hard economic times. Reading up on the WWII home front experience & all the fantastic ways people (women) then coped with shortages of basics, I can't imagine being asked to present a ration book at Sainsbury in exchange for my one solitary egg for the week. They'd have to barbed-wire the shelves and post armed guards... What would happen to all those fussy kids? Would they just starve to death? And I'm not sure I could knit a sock to save my life.

AIBU to think that, unlike our grannies, too many of us are a bunch of trembly-lipped 'ruined my life by delivering the wrong sort of tomato' wussies that would cave at the first mention of 'make do and mend'? ... or are we just as tough and capable of knuckling down in a crisis?

OP posts:
headfairy · 18/08/2011 18:36

Bleurgh :o I don't think so, she's taken her ration book to the great supermarket in the sky.

limitedperiodonly · 18/08/2011 18:43

I just phoned my mum to asked her about this. She said she would love to talk but it's been raining all day and she has to go now to get her cat something to eat or the shops will shut.

When I asked whether she couldn't just feed him scraps she asked: 'why would I do that?'

She's 88. She doesn't think there's anything romantic or noble about making do and mend. She's not obese and neither are we and she never needed anyone's guidance or restrictions on what to feed her family.

Before rushing off for some Whiskas she did mention that it was strange that people rejoiced in cutting back. She said if you did, that meant the hard times weren't biting. She grew up in the 30s. She doesn't wish those hard times on anybody ever again.

islawhiter · 18/08/2011 18:50

Didnt they eat pasta during the war? Could you imagine what we would do without pasta?

Astronaut79 · 18/08/2011 18:52

My mum still has her ration book. Thnink she was about 5 when it ended. SHe grew up on sugar butties, so I'm not sure how that would end the obesity crisis!

pamplemousserose · 18/08/2011 18:55

Bread was rained at certain times in the war, and was a national loaf that didn't taste good.

Might have been good for obesity, but people who were children during rationing have rubbish teeth as they weren't getting the nutrition needed to grow good teeth. No nhs either.

pamplemousserose · 18/08/2011 18:56

Rained? Rationed

iklboo · 18/08/2011 18:57

Can you grow a chicken on a windowsill?Grin
We do grow some veg in pots. We have 5 windows not including DS's room. But two cats (before you start we are NOT eating the cats). Small veg'd be ok. Local police might think we're running a cannabis farm though!

AuntiePickleBottom · 18/08/2011 18:59

i would more than manage if i had to, but i do think the uk have lost alot of essential skills. like rabbiting, fishing, gardening and also how to gut an animal.

also i think animals have become to domesticated, you wouldn't go into the garden and kill a chicken you have had as a pet, same as rabbit.

pamplemousserose · 18/08/2011 19:01

I think I could kill a chicken if I had to

izzywhizzyletsgetbusy · 18/08/2011 19:01

We'd all cope if we had to although, as reflected in society today, those who have more disposable income and those who are plugged into the black economy would cope better than others.

I've got a headstart as I already have a stack of butter papers in my fridge and sufficient frozen/tinned/dry foodstuff to outlast a 6month siege.

pamplemousserose · 18/08/2011 19:06

Remember also that people have had to cope with war and anarchy quite frequently in western countries in the last 20 years. Croatia any one?

limitedperiodonly · 18/08/2011 19:15

Agree, pamplemousse children were short and had poor teeth - but then they did before the war because of malnutrition.

My mother says she was lucky Shock because her mother died in childbirth so there were only four mouths to feed plus her father. He had to give up a relatively good job to look after them. Otherwise they'd have gone into an orphanage.

Many people had bread and dripping as their main meal forever and women often didn't eat at all to preserve the paltry food for their children and husbands.

During the war she queued for hours for food. Sometimes it ran out before she got to the head of the queue. Yes, they had rabbits and chickens in the backyard. It wasn't a lifestyle choiced with an Eglu. It was survival. They didn't starve but her childhood and her education and prospects were ruined.

I have no idea what happened to people whose countries were invaded.

I know most people are posting in lighthearted ways but this thread is really pissing me off. This period of history ruined lives and people accepted it because they had no alternative.

It wasn't a game and we should never think it was.

YoungishBag · 18/08/2011 19:19

I think 350g for 4 weeks of sweets is a lot.

I don't eat that now. And I'm a fatty.

pamplemousserose · 18/08/2011 19:25

People were burning a lot more calories though through manual work, and up half the night in air raids.

islawhiter · 18/08/2011 19:27

it seems to me from what i have read that when they got fed up with their kids and couldnt feed them properly they just put them in care, then shacked up with someone else and had some more kids.

pamplemousserose · 18/08/2011 19:31

That's really disrespectful, islawhiter. Can't see that you can criticise til you've lived through it.

pointydog · 18/08/2011 19:35

You can't just say to people, 'right you bastards, you're going on rations for the next year'. That wouldn't work.

But if we were in a real war situation, we'd just have to cope.

pointydog · 18/08/2011 19:38

My in laws lived through rationing.

Their lives now: loads of ready meals, biscuits galore and they use plastic plates and cutlery for half the year at the caravan. Past giving a monkeys about the planet.

Meglet · 18/08/2011 19:45

My dad was born in 44 but I understand there was rationing for quite a few years after that. Lots of family lived in the same village and one of his uncles just grew loads of potatoes in the garden for everyone so he said they never really went without. I bet my Grandad would have blagged loads of extras from somewhere.

headfairy · 18/08/2011 19:46

Limitedperiod I don't think that period ruined people's lives. Yes lots of people were very hungry and lost everything. My dad was in London throughout the war, he was 3 when it started. Ok so his teeth aren't great, but his life wasn't ruined by it. And yes, I know he's one person and I can't take that and apply it to everyone. But rationing was not the worst thing by far. My father still remembers the Blitz and he said that was much much worse than the hunger (he lived in a tower block in Waterloo, nowhere for them to keep chickens and grow veg) He slept in a tube station and scavenged on bomb sites. When he thinks about the danger he was in it scares him senseless. That's far worse than being a bit hungry.

Anyway, the wartime diet wasn't nearly as bad as it's made out. General poverty and no NHS made things much worse....

if you scroll to the bottom of this DM article it gives the calorific value of the war time diet and it's surprisingly high. I dont eat anything like 3000 calories a day now. I struggle to reach half that.

ragged · 18/08/2011 19:49

We don't know how to do anything any more. Who here could weave their own wool, or harvest and grind wheat using manual tools, or knows how to make charcoal, or salt & store a ham well enough to last a whole winter? Never mind whether you have the stomach to kill your own chicken or pig. We are soft beyond words.

CaptainBarnacles · 18/08/2011 19:53

Don't forget that everybody would be doing war work, so you would have to combine jam making, chicken keeping, mending clothes and queuing for your rations with a six day week down the factory too. As well as being a single parent for the duration. And of course no cars, so having to cycle/walk everywhere.

I am sure most people would cope, but it would be bloody hard work and very far from the 'hobby' gardening/mending/cooking most of us do today. You'd be lucky to have an hour on Sunday for a sit-down.

Whatmeworry · 18/08/2011 19:55

We'd have to knit our own lentils even......

headfairy · 18/08/2011 19:57

ragged I'm fairly sure my grandmother living in Waterloo didn't do any of that either and she survived. You're thinking more about surviving the wilderness. What she was good at was darning, but I mend all our clothes too rather than chucking things out if they tear.

Portofino · 18/08/2011 20:07

The book "Nella Last's War" is really good for describing what life was like - taken from the Mass Observation diaries.

Mind you, the follow up "Nella Last's Peace" stands out in my mind, for the very sad tale of her neighbour with PND who was shipped off to a Pyschiatric hospital Sad

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