The View From The Corner Shop: The Diary Of A Yorkshire Shop Assistant
In Wartime

Product Description

A lively diary chronicling the ups & downs of running a grocery shop in a Yorkshire town during the rationing years of the Second World War Kathleen Hey spent the war years helping her sister & brother-in-law run a grocery shop in the Yorkshire town of Dewsbury From July 1941 to July 1946 she kept a diary for the Mass-Observation project recording the thoughts & concerns of the people who used the shop What makes Kathleen's account such a vivid & compelling read is the immediacy of her writing People were pulling together on the surface (' Bert has painted the V-sign on the shop door' she writes) but there are plenty of tensions underneath The shortage of food & the extreme difficulty of obtaining it is a constant thread which dominates conversation in the town more so even than the danger of bombardment & the war itself Sometimes events take a comic turn A lack of onions provokes outrage among her customers & Kathleen writes 'I believe they think we have secret onion orgies at night & use them all up' The Brooke Bond tea rep complains that tea need not be rationed at all if supply ships were not filled with 'useless goods' such as Corn Flakes & there is a long-running saga about the non-arrival of Smedley's peas Among the chorus of voices she brings us Kathleen herself shines through as a strong & engaging woman who refuses to give in to doubts or misery & who maintains her keen sense of humour even under the most trying conditions A vibrant addition to our records of the Second World War the power of her diary lies in its juxtaposition of the everyday & the extraordinary the homely & the universal small town life & the wartime upheavals of a nation