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Former Telegraph journalist and Old Centaur John Garratt goes back to the
Forties for an epic school feast.
Sixty years ago, the last all-clear resounded across the country. "VE Day - It's
All Over," announced the Daily Mail. And in his last great oratorical flourish,
marking the end of the war in Europe, Prime Minister Winston Churchill
proclaimed to the people: "This is your victory. Advance Britannia!"
And we did. We were a patched-up nation of drab, down-at-heel, shiny-suited men,
shabby, unglamorous, stockingless women with painted legs and tattered kids in
hand-me-downs. But we had survived the Blitz, the bombing and the black-out and
we had seen off Adolf - Churchill's despicable Na-r-r-zi - and we went delirious
with triumph.
After 2,000 days of war, we took a two-day break - the official "brief period of
rejoicing" - to celebrate peace in Europe before turning our attentions to
Japan. The church bells rang out across Derby; we broke out the bunting and put
out the flags; we danced in the streets, took down the black-outs and packed out
the pubs. We revelled in torchlight processions, banging dustbin lids, cavorted
around bonfires and, finally, sat down to the biggest beano that Derby's
long-suffering housewives could conjure up.
No self-respecting street went without its kids' party and our mams who
single-handedly kept the family together, body and soul, throughout six years of
rationing, once again proved their worth as Churchill's secret weapon on the
Home Front. This magnificent body of pinafored women, who could make a broth out
of bare bones, once again called on their culinary cunning to give the street
tribes a war-winning treat.
Supplies were rushed to the tables from the backs of cupboards, from out of
hidey-holes and from under the counter; and kids, who had never seen a banana, a
grapefruit or a pineapple, were transported, for one stupendous sitting, to a
land of goo and gluttony.
Then we went back to the bread and jam. There were no spoils for the victor; it
was still the land of Tighten Your Belt, Make Do and Mend and Dig for Victory.
Yet, even today, the wartime backs-to-the-wall resolve of our generation remains
and surfaces whenever the going gets tough. So it proved, 60 years after VE Day,
when the 1944 intake of Derby Central School old boys were called to the Exeter
Arms to hear a special announcement.
We took our seats and listened open-mouthed to a proposal almost Churchillian in
its concept: that we should celebrate the diamond jubilee of the world's
greatest victory by sitting down to a 1940s' school dinner in all its awfulness.
There was a stunned silence as the culinary battle honours of the Second World
War swam before our eyes: Lord Woolton pie; spam; snoek; dried egg; cabbage
leaves, potato skins and bread crusts.
It may be that the Dunkirk spirit was burning particularly brightly that day, or
the beer was particularly strong, or we were feeling particularly blimpish, or
it may even have been a collective onset of dementia, but this astonishing
proposal was greeted with a roar of approval.
Old Centaurs' organiser Brian Skeldon had drawn up a 1940s' bill of fare for our
finest hour; it consisted of bangers and mash with boiled cabbage or peas
followed by the legendary "fag ash custard".
This unique blend was whipped up by a master's wife at a school camp at Whitby,
in 1947. An inveterate smoker, even in the dining hall, she let fall an inch of
ash into the custard vat, stirred it in with aplomb and offered our school
captain, Arnie Parr, a generous helping.
Whether or not it tickled Arnie's taste buds is open to question but, certainly,
for the last seven years he has lobbied ceaselessly for this epicurean dish to
go on the menu. So the die was cast; we got solidly behind our leaders, much as
we got behind Churchill in the Dark Days. Once again, we were "doing our bit"
for Britain and we basked in a patriotic glow.
The upcoming reunion at Darley Park was no longer regarded as a nostalgic
get-together of old school chums; it was our own D-Day, the Battle of the
Bangers. And as war fever gathered strength, our operations staff had to deal
with an avalanche of helpful wartime hints from Old Centaurs across the country.
From the Wirral, my old friend Peter Saunders pointed out that, if we were
looking for stark realism, pork sausages should contain only 45 per cent pork
and beef sausages only 34 per cent beef. Anything more and it would mean a trip
to the black market with a fistful of crisp white fivers.
From Buckinghamshire, Arnie Parr suggested the perfect complement for fag ash
custard: stewed orange peel and apple core compote. Don Lee called from
Hampshire to emphasise his partiality to fried spam with a dried egg fritter
and, from Kent, Gordon Rose said that no true school dinner would be complete
without tripe stew cooked in milk - white, slimy and, above all, inedible.
Closer to home, the entrepreneurs and wide boys sought to make a killing.
Randall Tomlinson demanded we renew his entitlement to free school dinners and
Geoff Noble called for payment at 1940s' prices. Sadly, as so often happens in
times of war, ingenuity goes unappreciated and the High Command vetoed both
suggestions.
The most delicate stage of the long step backwards to 1940s' rationing now had
to be undertaken. Chief of Staff Brian Skeldon needed all his diplomatic skills
to convince Jill and Ken Gee, who have hosted our reunions at Darley Park tea
rooms for the past eight years, that we really had a sound reason for rejecting
chicken legs, succulent savouries and mouth-watering gateaux.
The question was: would they go into the kitchen, sacrifice their professional
pride and do their worst? The answer was "Yes, if that was what we wanted" - and
so, 60 years on, we crowded into our old form room at Darley and sniffed the
aromas permeating around the kitchen.
Was this the 1940s' miasma of stale cabbage water, burnt bangers with
unmentionable filling, potato peelings, sour fruit, boiled-over milk and custard
powder? Where was the reeking, roiling, malodorous pong that a generation of
schoolboys forever associated with school dinners and would instantly recognise
as the unique smell of the 1940s' school kitchen?
And where was our late lamented form-master, Corky Coates who, as Peter
Hodgkinson recalled, used to pace the dining hall gimlet-eyed, challenging every
complaint about the unpalatable mess with a snarl: "Well, what's wrong with it?"
In his place we had Olive Stone, 27 years a dinner lady at Ripley St John's
School, specially drafted in by Jill and Ken to keep order among a bunch of
72-year-old kids. Olive, turbaned in 1940s' style and every inch the Lady of the
Ladle, ordered us into line and told us to shut up. This was more like the real
thing; it was the language we understood. We filed up silently as Olive and Jill
dished up the bangers, the spuds, the peas and the gravy. Sadly, there was a
certain delicacy about the serving, a refinement that had no place in the dining
hall of the 1940s. As we well knew, our old Central School cooks could drop a
lump of leaden potato on a dinner plate like a stick of bombs over Berlin. We
took our places at the table, our blazers unspattered and our nostrils
twitching.
Bernard Golding lowered his head over the plate and inhaled deeply, like a
connoisseur sniffing a much-loved wine and pronounced: "It's definitely a
1940-ish bouquet. Not quite spot-on, but close enough. I've had this plenty of
times at the old British Restaurant in Tenant Street. Great value at one
shilling (5p)."
The plates were cleared in record time and we sat expectantly waiting for the
pudding. Lumpy semolina, tapioca, sago, suet? These we had loved and loathed,
but the final offering was a schoolboy dream, fantasy beyond the realms of the
school kitchen. A feather-light apple pie, bursting with fruit and smothered in
smooth, thick, creamy custard. Was this a school dinner fit to take its place
alongside the lean, mean and frugal fare of the Forties? Our skipper, Arnie
Parr, rose to give judgement and there was a hushed silence among the veterans
of a thousand school dinners.
"Where were the grey lumps in the potatoes?" he asked mildly. And with mounting
passion: "Where was the gristle in the sausages? And the fat? And the sawdust?
And could anybody taste the fag ash in the custard? Call that a school dinner!"
Arnie gazed heavenwards and, in five inspired words, appeased the ghost of the
gimlet-eyed Corky: "Three cheers for the cooks!" The rafters of the old form
room rang with the ovation and the empty plates danced a happy jig as we thumped
the tables in appreciation.
School dinner ladies of the Forties never had it like this.
From the Derby Evening Telegraph, July 19, 2005
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