Toast-rack

When my folks got married in 1950, they were happy to be alive both having been In Uniform and In Foreign for at least part of WWII and been spattered with matter as people next to them took incoming. But life was bleak enough with rationing, austerity and ramping up existential dread of the Cold War. But they had a wedding in London, the in-laws met, and people gave them trousseau to start life together. Three toast-racks! We have one toast-rack: it's handy for storing misc thin clutter in the kitchen = Bellarom chocolate, recipes, wedding invitations. Three toast-racks [hark Lady Bracknell] and/or other examples of giftuplication was not unique to my parents. That problem saw the birth of Wedding Lists where John Lewis or Clery's would corner the market coordinate the giving and shift a lot of product.

Austerity? After the wedding but before the kids, Cmdr & Mrs Scientist lived for a year in Rodwell, Dorset about 100m from a cutting on the railway which went from Weymouth out to the naval base at Portland. As well as the occasional First Class passenger [R], that railway shifted A Lot of coal because both naval and merchant ships used to bunker at Portland. The newly-weds weren't proud and used to take the coal-scuttle and a torch after dark and scavenge winter fuel from the tracks.

In due course that union produced three navy brats. If The Skipper was in port[smouth] my mother would take the family to stay in the Nuffield United Services Club so we had sight of him . . . or his ship. There's a traditional family word-picture of 2 y.o. me out on a breakwater flailing vigorously in the wrong direction when encouraged to wave at Daddy's ship. As an 8 y.o. at the Nuffield Club I could put down prodigious quantities of buttered toast, which the waiters delivered in triangular half slices on a toast-rack. Any empty toast rack on a table was replaced with one fully charged. I, otoh, couldn't leave a bit for master manners and allow 'free' toast to sit before me enracked and uneaten. It was a war nobody could win. Eventually my mother would stand up and sail from the room and I would waddle out after the rest of the family.

The Blob has had rather a lot to say about toast. Maybe those Nuffield weekends set my clock because I still have tea [weak, at least a litre] and toast [buttered + marmalade, 2 slices] for breakfast. I don't bother with the toast-rack or even a plate tbh: just gulp and scarf, gulp and scarf. Butter? I should add that my father was, after 10 years of rationing [prev], notably flaithiúlach with butter: more-or-less equal in weight to the bread beneath.

And while we're on family food-lore, I'll mention that, growing up in 1960s, a fairly strict polish-your-plate policy was implemented. Even if that meant my mother sweeping gristle and sinew from my plate onto hers. My sister's bestie at school used to fish out 'gristle' from skool-dinner shepherd's pie and leave all these suspect bits in a circle round the edge of her plate. Sis: "would y'just eat the pie, already?".  

Years later, after her WWII PTSD had somewhat ebbed away, my mother gave some insight into where the family dinner policy originated. She volunteered for the ATS [Auxiliary Territorial Service] early on, more or less straight from school. In 1944, after many adventures, she and her mates took the tools of their trade [kine-theodolite] to the Low Countries following the front lines and trying to pinpoint the launching sites of flying bombs. One evening, they heard strange sounds from outside the quonset hut in which they were billeted. It turned out to be an elderly gent rootling through their dustbin looking for food scraps. They adopted The Professor (he had taught at the local tech high school), making up a regular ration-pack for him and his family, until they moved on Northwards. They'd reached Breda, in Noord-Brabant by May 1945 and celebrated VE day there with the most tremendous knees-up.

Trigger: Mefi breakfast question.