2024 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Nelliegrace

https://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/this-july-week-in-1940/

Grandma Donna started her 1940 Project in July this year. She is reading their local daily paper for 1940 as part of the research, and I joined her with daily reading of back issues of The Times from 1940. I started with the reports of Dunkirk, and have just read of the Battle of Britain. It is just ten pages now, to save paper, and Monday to Saturday. There are fascinating insights like this. I thought of the blackout in the evening, but they had to get up in blackout for half of the year, too. 


One hopes that knitting was sorted out by someone at the working party, before being sent for Comforts for the forces.

Sarahspangles

Nelliegrace said:

https://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/this-july-week-in-1940/

Grandma Donna started her 1940 Project in July this year. She is reading their local daily paper for 1940 as part of the research, and I joined her with daily reading of back issues of The Times from 1940. I started with the reports of Dunkirk, and have just read of the Battle of Britain. It is just ten pages now, to save paper, and Monday to Saturday. There are fascinating incite, like this. I thought of the blackout in the evening, but they had to get up in blackout for half of the year, too. 

How odd that they weren’t consistent with the way they set out the times! But I suppose the newspaper could have had some unusual staff at that point.

Laura_Elsewhere

Sarahspangles said:

Nelliegrace said:

https://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/this-july-week-in-1940/

Grandma Donna started her 1940 Project in July this year. She is reading their local daily paper for 1940 as part of the research, and I joined her with daily reading of back issues of The Times from 1940. I started with the reports of Dunkirk, and have just read of the Battle of Britain. It is just ten pages now, to save paper, and Monday to Saturday. There are fascinating incite, like this. I thought of the blackout in the evening, but they had to get up in blackout for half of the year, too. 

How odd that they weren’t consistent with the way they set out the times! But I suppose the newspaper could have had some unusual staff at that point.

Now you have me puzzled- what isn't consistent about how they set out the times? It looks identical to me, other than that the first one mentions the moon going into its next quarter (which wouldn't happen daily, so wouldn't be mentioned daily). 

Otherwise, both go:
sun rise, set
moon set, rise
Lighting-up time
Black-out period
High water at London and at Dover

Sarahspangles

Laura_Elsewhere said:

Sarahspangles said:

Nelliegrace said:

https://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/this-july-week-in-1940/

Grandma Donna started her 1940 Project in July this year. She is reading their local daily paper for 1940 as part of the research, and I joined her with daily reading of back issues of The Times from 1940. I started with the reports of Dunkirk, and have just read of the Battle of Britain. It is just ten pages now, to save paper, and Monday to Saturday. There are fascinating incite, like this. I thought of the blackout in the evening, but they had to get up in blackout for half of the year, too. 

How odd that they weren’t consistent with the way they set out the times! But I suppose the newspaper could have had some unusual staff at that point.

Now you have me puzzled- what isn't consistent about how they set out the times? It looks identical to me, other than that the first one mentions the moon going into its next quarter (which wouldn't happen daily, so wouldn't be mentioned daily). 

Otherwise, both go:
sun rise, set
moon set, rise
Lighting-up time
Black-out period
High water at London and at Dover

I meant ‘Sun rises, 6.1 a.m.; sets, 8.2 p.m. Moon sets, 12.39 p.m;’ and so forth.  Whereas if we were listing those today you would see 6.01 or 06.01 am or 06:01 for 24 hour clock. They would always have two digits for the minutes and nearly always for the hours. Though I’m also now seeing 0601 coming into use.

The old usage does make sense for a time before decimals when £ pounds were split into 20ths and lb pounds into 16ths. 

Sarahspangles

Nelliegrace said:

One hopes that knitting was sorted out by someone at the working party, before being sent for Comforts for the forces.

It’s a party but you will keep your hat on and sit upright in an uncomfortable chair.

Is the lady in the unsuitable chair in the bay being punished for knitting Continental style in the round?

Nelliegrace

@Sarahspangles, did you never wind a ball skein of wool from a skein on your knees? It would have been easier if one of the other ladies had held the skein, but they are all too busy, anxious, isolated in their thoughts, focused on their war work. They have all turned up and a few more, so one is perched on a chair arm and one standing to knit. There is no conversation, no table set for a cup of tea, just a huge pile of wool to be knitted. The room had no pictures, no flowers, but is coloured in solemn army khaki, navy blue and airforce blue. One thin, pale, sad woman in black and grey has paused and looks at the artist. I wonder if she is of the many superfluous women who lost someone in the Great War, does her look say, “We have seen this all before.” I have just noticed that she is the one reflected in the mirror. 

Sarahspangles

Nelliegrace said:

@Sarahspangles, did you never wind a ball skein of wool from a skein on your knees? It would have been easier if one of the other ladies had held the skein, but they are all too busy, anxious, isolated in their thoughts, focused on their war work. They have all turned up and a few more, so one is perched on a chair arm and one standing to knit. There is no conversation, no table set for a cup of tea, just a huge pile of wool to be knitted. The room had no pictures, no flowers, but is coloured in solemn army khaki, navy blue and airforce blue. One thin, pale, sad woman in black and grey has paused and looks at the artist. I wonder if she is of the many superfluous women who lost someone in the Great War, does her look say, “We have seen this all before.”

Oh yes - it’s yarn! Rather than a gansey. I can nearly always fit skeins on a chair back. Or OH obliges.

Your interpretation makes it very real. When we cleared my parents’ house we found an envelope that must have been my great grandmother’s with a photograph, medal, the dreaded telegram and the follow up letter from an officer. Trooper Bell didn’t even make it to the front because his ship was sunk. Though nobody now living remembers him, it’s hard to dispose of things like that.

Laura_Elsewhere

Nelliegrace said:

@Sarahspangles, did you never wind a ball skein of wool from a skein on your knees? It would have been easier if one of the other ladies had held the skein, but they are all too busy, anxious, isolated in their thoughts, focused on their war work. They have all turned up and a few more, so one is perched on a chair arm and one standing to knit. There is no conversation, no table set for a cup of tea, just a huge pile of wool to be knitted. The room had no pictures, no flowers, but is coloured in solemn army khaki, navy blue and airforce blue. One thin, pale, sad woman in black and grey has paused and looks at the artist. I wonder if she is of the many superfluous women who lost someone in the Great War, does her look say, “We have seen this all before.” I have just noticed that she is the one reflected in the mirror. 

And as for the hats- in those days, you kept your hat on when you visited sopmebody in their home, or went into a restaurant for a meal, to the cinema, etc. Hairstyles were not made for "hat-hair", and once your hat went on, it stayed on unless you were able to go somewhere private with a mirror, hairbrush and comb and hairpins, etc., to tidy one's hair... think of all those novels where someone arrives at another's home and is greeted with, "you'll want to go upstairs and tidy yourself"- part of that would be sorting out your hair after having worn a hat. 

PipneyJane

Sarahspangles said:

Nelliegrace said:

@Sarahspangles, did you never wind a ball skein of wool from a skein on your knees? It would have been easier if one of the other ladies had held the skein, but they are all too busy, anxious, isolated in their thoughts, focused on their war work. They have all turned up and a few more, so one is perched on a chair arm and one standing to knit. There is no conversation, no table set for a cup of tea, just a huge pile of wool to be knitted. The room had no pictures, no flowers, but is coloured in solemn army khaki, navy blue and airforce blue. One thin, pale, sad woman in black and grey has paused and looks at the artist. I wonder if she is of the many superfluous women who lost someone in the Great War, does her look say, “We have seen this all before.”

Oh yes - it’s yarn! Rather than a gansey. I can nearly always fit skeins on a chair back. Or OH obliges.

Your interpretation makes it very real. When we cleared my parents’ house we found an envelope that must have been my great grandmother’s with a photograph, medal, the dreaded telegram and the follow up letter from an officer. Trooper Bell didn’t even make it to the front because his ship was sunk. Though nobody now living remembers him, it’s hard to dispose of things like that.

@Sarahspangles, we will remember Trooper Bell on Armistice Day.  I promise that to you and to your Great Grandmother.  

He won’t be forgotten.  I have a special bottle of sherry stashed away.  We’ll raise a glass to Trooper Bell and to my great uncles Manny and Sam (who both died at Gallipoli), and Mark (who died on the Western Front).

- Pip

ETA:   If anyone would like to add a name to the Much Mending On The Borrow War Memorial, please PM me and I will do a special post listing their names on 11th November;  Unless otherwise requested, I will keep the proposer anonymous.

weenancyinAmerica

If you want to pass items like those of Trooper Bell along, please remember places like the Imperial War Museum and Eden Park (in Yorkshire).