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When I recently rediscovered the shrapnel posted elsewhere on this forum, in the same suitcase, I also found this egg box which my father used during WW2 to transport eggs from home to school in order to bribe teachers into "letting him off" detentions. Sorry about the typos in my father's account.
Black market and bartering etc was very common in the UK during WW2 and most people were "at it", even children.
That's a hilariously story!!! You Brits were big with the eggs thing. The gyro horizon indicators on all your RAF aircraft were marked thusly:
https://www.milsurps.com/attachment....79&cid=1&stc=1
Bob
It says a lot for the service of the then Royal Mail that eggs would arrive unbroken in a box like that!
Reminds me of a story that my father in law told about swapping his homemade country biscuits for store bought sliced loaf bread at lunch when he was in elementary school. Being Northern Neck Virginia farmers they couldn’t afford store bought. Born in 1915, farmed with oxen too. A neat guy.
Mother's father worked at a coal mine, above ground, and part of the pay was a ton of coal delivered per month. During the war he exchanged (over the fence in the back garden) some "surplus coal" with the neighbour on one side who worked in a soft drinks factory for some "surplus sugar" because the factory used a lot of sugar. The neighbour on the other side worked in a shoe factory and so "surplus coal" was also able to flow in the opposite direction in exchange for "surplus new shoes".