Last week was rather quiet for me as I was nursing a cold, so not only was my poor little blog neglected, but I didn’t even manage to do a shop update. It will be quiet in blogland again tomorrow, as I will be down in Brighton to see a preview of the new Biba exhibition. Don’t worry, I will take as many pictures as I can to share with you all so those of you who can’t go can still enjoy the marvellous clothes.
On a completely unrelated note, I came across this picture several weeks ago and saved it up to show you all. It was taken in 1942, and shows a dustman from Tottenham in North London holding one of his piglets. The greedy little porker was nicknamed Hitler after attempting to grab food away from the rest of the litter. The shed where the pigs were kept was humorously signed ‘Adolf’s Kindergarten’, with bombing verboten (forbidden).
Families were encouraged to raise their own chickens and rabbits where possible during the war, and to a lesser extent, pigs (needing much more room and food). Some families would share a pig, each contributing kitchen scraps for feeding it up, and then divide the meat between them after it was slaughtered. You could also donate your scraps to communal pig swill bins, which would be taken away and fed to farm pigs.
The topic of pig-sharing was covered in last week’s episode of Wartime Farm, which has been fascinating so far. If you haven’t been watching, it is on BBC2 on Thursday evening, and you can catch up with previous Wartime Farm episodes on iPlayer.
1970s psychedelic swimsuit beach dress 
1970s fine cable knit red wool sweater 
1960s rainbow orange ‘psych’ jumper 
1970s faux fur leopard dress by Veronica at Rembrandt 
1930s double headed fox fur stole 
all our left over food from school used to go to the local pig farm, I wonder if that still happens now?
I read somewhere while researching this that pig swill was outlawed in 2001 to help prevent foot and mouth disease, so I guess there wouldn’t be any more.
Mmmmmm….. bacon!
I know we should be soooo very concerned with what we eat, but lordy….big ole ham hock with beans makes my mouth water all over my keyboard !