These days, I drive my daughters up the wall! It’s a case of minimalists versus hoarders.

The hoarding habit is in-built, a legacy of the times in which I was born,

during a blackout, in war torn Glasgow, Nineteen Forty.

Every scrap of material was a prisoner. Aunties and grannies ripped out worn pullovers to make smaller garments for the children. Threadbare sleeves were doubled, sewn together and soft dusting mitts were born.

Collars were unpicked, turned, then a shirt or blouse had a new lease of life.

Once they were really done the buttons, hooks and eyes, or press studs were carefully saved for re-use.

Home dressmakers were innovative, keeping brown paper bags for everything from zips to squares of cloth which would make a patchwork quilt or cushion cover. Prized pieces of velvet, satin or brocade emerged from another chrysalis as a soft, attractive bag. They made a personal gift to house a lawn handkerchief, makeup or those precious, much sought after sheer nylons’s.

Brown paper, string, elastic and paper pokes were saved with care.

Every Saturday we dared air attacks to travel across the city, taking the underground to Govan Cross then another bus, to visit granny.

We always left with something special. A small jar of home made jam (mind and save the jar now!), a few dusters recycled from a soft piece of flannel nightgown or a new V necked pullover, to keep us warm.

We played in the street, drawing chalk lines for peever. It was our job, as kids, to take potato peelings and scrapings to the pigswill bin which was an integral part of every street.

Sometimes we collected horse manure from the road, competing to get it before it stopped steaming!

This was highly prized for the gardens where potatoes were grown in the promotion to

"dig for victory".

Even the mound of earth that covered the Anderson shelter had something edible growing over it!

The journey back to Milton Street from grannys was scary. No lights to help you actually see the bus, just good use of your ears. The subway always had its complement of drunken men, their jacket weighted down one side with the "carry out" bottle of whisky.

Why was it always me that was crushed into the tiny space beside a very large lady?

They always had a distinctive smell, one you never notice nowadays.

My memory bank brings it to mind in parallel with my beloved aroma of the subway.

It makes me smile to remember the way I used to stand at the entrance to Partick Cross underground and simply take in lung-fulls of Glasgow’s inimitable stamp.

In my head I see the grown-ups gathered round the kitchen window at grannys. The men, my father and granddad are shaking fists, my grannie and mother crying. I tug at my father’s trouser leg and lift my arms. I want to see what is outside the window. What are all the lights,

criss crossing in the sky?

Many years later I read that it was the Clydebank blitz; that first memory was just

before my first birthday.

Later on I see my mother telling me I am dreaming, that it wasn’t a rat from the canal that ran across the bottom of my bed.

The pictures shift to a group of us playing "dare" in the street. It was my turn.

They nodded to a tall thin man with a wrinkled, too old face and spaced out eyes.

"Any gum chum?" I enquired.

His face creased, etching deep lines of utter weariness. Simply shouldering a large kitbag, he straightened his sailors cap and walked on.

We were taught by a cruel martinet of a woman. Her long skirted maroon suit, grey,

wispy bun and expertise with a ruler when you wrote off the lines form my first memories of school.

It took two hospital visits and an operation to rid my hand of the ganglion she bequeathed me.

Many of us had dreams about the grotesque Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck gas masks which

smelled of old rubber tyres. We dreaded the "gas mask" drill and some of us

had to be "encouraged" to wear them, for our own good.

Brownies were great; you could let off steam in the church hall, stand proudly when you earned your tenderfoot badge, and they always saw you home through, shadowy unlit streets.

As for food, we made marzipan potatoes with almond essence to flavour the concoction and cocoa powder to dust the outside, resembling a potato.

There were entire cookery columns telling you how to get the best use out of dried egg substitute.

One of my favourite dinners was a large cooked potato in the middle of a soup bowl, surrounded by a lake of dissolved Oxo cube. You took a spoonful of potato and dipped it into the gravy.

A tea plate of chips along with bread and margarine was a common supper, much preferable to

school fish pie. But of course, if you didn’t eat it all, there was no sago pudding for afters!

I don’t remember missing sweets because they were not available. Christmas was a three- quarter sock which housed an apple, a tangerine in silver paper if they could be obtained, a book and a sixpence.

In the evenings we read by gas mantle, played Snakes and Ladders or wrote lines of spelling with the right hand. Being left handed was not acceptable at school.

Even the click of knitting needles ceased when the news came over the wireless.

Listening to "Winnie" was carried out in complete silence.

For us, the children of the time, life was simple. We were fed, dressed, educated in spite of the war. Who knew what was just around the corner, that the great ideals of The National Health Service, free milk and orange juice, school meals and education for all were just about to rise from the ashes.

I still maintain that I have lived in the greatest era of all.

by Gladys Taylor

     Recycling tell us about it         click play button for streaming audio