Horseradishes
My favourite was rice pudding with currants in it. It wasn’t served every day, but when it was I’d fill any receptacles I could find, such as jars, cans and even paper bags, up to the brims with it.
Once I got a stone jar from somewhere and filled it to the top with the pudding. Then I found a deserted section of waste ground and buried it, content in the knowledge that if I went hungry in the school holidays I could come and dig up my feast. I never did find it and still went hungry outside term time.
There were other ways of getting food during the summer. There were quite a few allotments backing onto the railway, with vegetables leftover from the ‘dig for victory’ campaign. We would sneak across there and eat whatever looked appetising. We would always try to make as little mess as possible, hoping not to be discovered. We never had much idea of what the vegetables were -- we’d eat anything! Many times I suffered bellyache from gorging on the likes of what I think must have been horseradishes.
