Retail just became a democracy
My mother always talked about the War with respect. You didn’t make light of the War. You could make jokes about it, but you didn’t diminish it. She didn’t talk about it often, but when she did she’d talk for hours. She would talk about the Blitz, air raid shelters, blackout curtains, sleeping in the Underground, rationing, going hungry, the dreams she’d have about bananas, the gas masks she treasured. She talked about hoarding coal (your own, not other people’s), painting seams down the back of her legs so she looked like she was wearing stockings and how she would use gravy browning to tan her legs. She also talked about being rescued by military firemen while she was having a (tin) bath, just minutes before a bomb destroyed her parents’ house…
