I had to stop and think. What did I remember about the queen marrying Prince Philip?
As it happens, not much. I know it was in 1947 and they were married at Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The reason why I don't remember much about the Queen's wedding is very simple. It has nothing to do with being over 81. The fact is that we didn't, as a family living in a rural area of Lancashire, have a television in those days. And nor did anyone else we knew.
I watched the queen's coronation in 1953 but that was on television in Washington DC where I was, by then, living with my husband, posted there by the RAF after the war. It was in Washington that I first saw a television, in 1951.
I've seen many pictures of the queen's wedding to Prince Philip but I'm pretty sure I saw them long after 1947. I don't even remember seeing photos in newspapers at the time although perhaps I did. Our main source of news back then was the Pathé news reels that we saw in the cinema. I was aware that the royal wedding was happening but it wasn't a very big deal round our way. I was a teenager and certainly had other things on my mind. Boys, for example.
One thing I do remember is that there were some local women who sent their ration cards to Princess Elizabeth, as she was then, so she would be able to have enough material for her wedding dress. We were still rationed for years after the war and even if you had money you needed ration cards to get material just as you did to get food and other things. I'm probably being very naive there. She probably had a hundred ways round rationing. Anyway, I remember local women sending off ration cards to contribute.
Talking of the cinema, my friends and I used to go to the cinemas in Blackpool once a week or so. The Clifton Palace was a small cinema where the cashier handed you a square metal token instead of a ticket to get into the film. There was a back door at the Clifton which was sometimes left open - I don't know why - maybe to clear cigarette smoke or as an emergency exit. Little boys used to wait outside till the lights went down and the B film started and then they'd creep in, giggling, and watch the films for free. In those days there were always two feature films. The B film, then the main one. Most of the films we saw back then were American. I'm talking about during the war now - 1940, 1941 - when I was 11, 12 years old. (We didn't think anything of getting the bus into Blackpool and then back home again at that age.) I remember the stars we saw were people like Abbott and Costello, Betty Grable, Dorothy Lamour, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. All those "Road To..." films.
There were a lot of Westerns too - cowboys and indians, which have long since fallen out of favour. At the time they were very popular and often quite bloodthirsty. My pal Betty used to hide her face against her seat when there was violence and ask me to tell her when it was over. Strange really because she was a rather robust farmer's daughter and I'm sure even at her tender age she was used to the sight of real blood on the farm.
Later, when we got television, we watched yet more Westerns. Wagon Train is one of the ones I remember. Clint Eastwood in Rawhide was quite a lot later on I think. Then police series became popular. Dixon of Dock Green would seem totally outdated these days but, at the time, the idea of the wise local bobby wasn't so farfetched. When I was a teenager, about 18 or 19, there used to be a show on the radio called Dick Barton, Special Agent. Again, people would laugh at it now but my father listened to it faithfully. I'd always be getting ready to go out when it came on and once Dick Barton started I knew I'd have to get my make-up on and run or I'd miss the bus into town.
I know I'm rambling a bit here but thinking of those years, Pathé news reel, the royal wedding and the war reminds me of something else. Betty and I used to collect money during the war for the Penny A Week Fund. This was a Red Cross fund and the idea was to collect money to send to the Red Cross so they could send food parcels to our prisoners in the camps.
Betty and I were about eleven when we started collecting and we weren't meant to - we were too young. Everyone turned a blind eye though. Every Sunday mornings we'd cycle off on our rounds on our bikes, going from farm to farm in the countryside to collect contributions. Our local bobby was called PC Woodward and everyone thought he was really good-looking. He had a grim wife and a very pretty daughter called Arletta. All the people we collected from for Penny A Week gave more than a penny but MrsWoodward always gave exactly that - one penny!
The money went off to the Red Cross and they sent food parcels to POWs in German camps. I had a cousin in one camp and his best friend there was an Australian called Jack Hercules. My cousin and Jack knew that we collected for the food parcels and when they eventually got released at the end of the war they both came to England. My cousin came home obviously; Jack Hercules just came to visit. He then returned to Australia and, returning the solidarity we'd shown him during his years in the camp, he used to send us food parcels up until post-war rationing was stopped.
One of the other things Betty and I did to help the war effort was to hold a jumble sale. We asked people we knew - family and neighbours - to give us old stuff and then we held a jumble sale in a hen house to raise funds for Mrs Churchill's Aid To Russia Fund. We were twelve years old I guess, so it was about 1941 or 1942. The bobby's wife, Mrs Woodward again, said she wanted a preview of the sale so she could have first pick of the items for sale. We refused! We had some quite good stuff too. A milliner's shop had closed down because business was so bad and the owner gave us lots of hats to sell. Mrs Churchill's Fund was, again, for the Red Cross but this one sent medicine and surgical equipment to our Russian allies. I can't remember how much we raised - not very much I don't suppose - but we got a letter back from Mrs Churchill, signed Clementine Churchill. She thanked us for raising funds "to help our brave Russian allies."
Then we held a raffle. Heaven knows why we did all these things. I can't remember anyone prompting us. It was probably just the spirit of the times. Anyway, we begged and borrowed rationed food from relatives and neighbours - bags of sugar or a few eggs or a packet of tea - and then sold them raffle tickets so they could win them back... When we'd sold all the tickets we put them in a big ceramic bowl at Betty's house and started drawing them out. Betty drew the first ticket and looked at the name. "I don't like her" she said and promptly put the ticket back in the bowl. She didn't like the next person either. I had a go and put my ticket back in too. We kept going till we drew someone we liked. At some point Betty's mother came in and saw what we were doing. She stopped it right away! All the tickets went back in the bowl and she said firmly "I'll draw them now. We'll do it properly."
Looking back I can't see how so many of us got through those years really. Rations were so tight and food so scarce. There was a black market of course but we were in the countryside. In winter there wasn't much food about. My father kept a dozen chickens so we had eggs but he needed corn to feed them. He'd go up to the nearby farm to get corn for them on the black market. It was a bit risky and one night he ran into PC Woodward. Worried that he'd get into trouble he soon realised that the bobby, who kept chickens too, was going to the farm for exactly the same reason - black market corn for his hens.
Sometimes a local farmer would kill a pig and we'd get some meat. Or my father would kill one of the chickens if it got too old to lay eggs, or shoot a rabbit. We had a quarter of an acre of garden too, where he grew fruit and vegetables. But so many things were rationed for so long - bread, soap, sweets, eggs, butter, meat, flour. Everything you needed really.
But get through it we did. There wasn't really any choice.
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