Saving a Record of the Dialect:
Hardships of the World War Two

Most of us are fortunate to have never gone hungry.
In fact today we eat more than is good for us.
Those old enough to remember the last war will no doubt
remember queues and personal privation, but also perhaps
evacuees from London who had never had a "square meal"
even in peacetime.


Pat     Sarah, my daughter, asked Jeff to do the dialect for her grandchildren.
Jeffrey  The dialect that I’m doing is not just dialect, it’s history as well, I’m telling them something about what happened. It could go on for ever. I could tell them about the fairs for instance. I could tell them about the coal picking. I could tell them about what we haven’t touched on when in the war every Saturday morning I used to go into Swadlincote and queue outside Roberts and Birch’s it was then. And I could queue from half past seven in the morning till half past twelve, didn’t know what I was queuing for and when I got there (they’d) say, “Sorry, son, we’ve got nothing left.”   I’ve done that above once, and people say they’re deprived now, and this poverty, and I’ve gone back and my mother’s said, “It’ll be half a round of bread and dripping for your lunch, we’ve nothing else.”   Not a round.   They won’t believe it now when I tell them.   And I’d probably say then, I’ll go to my grandmother’s and see if she’s got anything then for tea.   And I mean, I’d go ten miles then.   I’d go five miles and walk to Boundary, I never came to this grandma’s because she was bed-ridden and she couldn’t speak, so you know, you couldn’t come here.   And I used to go up there and they’d probably say, “I’m sorry, we’ve got one crust left until the baker comes on Monday.   And they were the same, the only thing they’d got, we were on about it last week, were fresh eggs.   Me grandmother at Boundary had got chickens; they were at the top of the garden.   And we used to go and sit and wait for the chicken to lay, and feel underneath the chicken, and then they used to take it down and have it.   You can’t believe it now, can you?

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3 What was a "pit bonk"?

4 Ceramics in Newhall

5,6 The Newhall Wakes / Works trips by train

8 Newhall Football Clubs and Pat's Sunday outings

9 Bretby Hall and Dances with Soldiers

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