April 2013
What a waste!
The times I have used that expression.
One in particular is when I visit the family for Sunday lunch. There are always leftovers and they all go into the bin. Occasionally, if l am quick enough to get my daughter in law to put the veg on a plate before they are put in the bin, especially her baked taters as they are really good, then I can warm them up next day for a very satisfying lunch.
Of course they were never on rations during and for a considerable time after the war.
I remember returning from our honeymoon and seeing our rations on the kitchen table: 4oz of bacon or ham, 2ozs of tea, 2 oz of cheese and 2 ozs of butter or 4 oz of margarine. Eggs: one per week or three for children. Meat: ½ pence worth sweets – 12 ozs per month.
But apart from dinner, on Thursday when there was very little food left as the money had run out we managed and were not ill with all the suet pudding we ate to make the meat go further.
Another time it is used is when l see family not talking to each other. l would have died for a sister or brother and to see some stop communicating with each other for some seemingly trivial reason makes me want say, 'Forget it, time is too short'.
Another thing: why are homosexual fellas always so handsome and caring and tidy. We knew a lady who had a gentleman friend who was inclined towards the left and she said that when they met one of his friends he got the welcome hug and kiss and she was left standing like a lemon.
I have been interested in history for some years now and recently gave home to the Military History group. l had prepared papers for the Hundred Years War and the Battle of Trafalgar.
But this class of eight men and two women is more like Boy's Own. All they want to discuss is the First and the Second World Wars. They all only did national service so were not particularly in action but they love it. All the records I keep pointing out are the amount of men uselessly and tragically killed on the whim of a General, who was still using old fashioned tactics, forcing them to hold a position until the end regardless; that there was not a chance in hell of them winning the battle. What a waste.
Of course there is another aspect. Plenty of exercise will help and a diet possibly. It is very hard to achieve that shape so desired by every woman from Marilyn Monroe to Elizabeth the First. I saw her last week by the way at Hampton Court. Bit amazing you may think but I even caught her in a photo with her paramour, Henry the Eighth. They seemed very friendly to ordinary folks like us, popping in with a merry quip about being pleased to see us. Well we keep them employed playing the part. Anyway as l said, all women have this yearning; my friend has just spent a fortune and two weeks starving herself at a Health Farm to achieve the satisfaction of acquiring it. My mother even tried, although she wore stays . . . well corsets. She used to remove them at night and have a good scratch and really she was rather rotund so it just held all her bits in really. What is that exclamation they all yearn to hear. 'My god, girl, what a waist!
There, you must be thinking, all that drivel, time and paper to come up with such a banal story.
Golly, what a waste.