pigs

Pigs appear in the memoir not as a single named animal but as a population drawn into the demands of the British wartime economy. Their hunger becomes a public responsibility, while their bodies become scarce food, contraband, and the source of a family ordeal. Across these episodes, pigs connect national policy with the most intimate details of household life: bins in the street, scraps saved for livestock, a pram repurposed as a means of transport, and a ham whose smell seems impossible to hide.

Pigs in the Wartime Food System

Apart from the general deprivations imposed on civilians, every household is expected to contribute to feeding the nation’s pigs. Large bins are distributed through the streets so that fresh and dry food scraps can be collected, and newspaper advertisements urge the public to donate what would otherwise be thrown away. The appeal is framed as a matter of national necessity: the pigs are short of food, and fattening them is part of the war effort. Domestic waste is therefore reclassified as a resource, linking kitchens and livestock to the wider system of wartime supply.

This demand becomes more urgent because food rationing soon follows petrol rationing and clothing controls. Food requires both money and coupons, while a points system adjusts the number of points demanded for particular goods according to their availability. The memoir records allowances that leave poorer households with only a small quantity of meat, bacon or ham, butter, margarine or lard, cheese, tea, sugar, honey or jam, milk, and dried egg. In that setting, pigs represent both the national attempt to preserve food production and the painful scarcity of the foods they may eventually provide.

From Livestock to Contraband

The family’s circumstances change sharply after leaving The Woodman Hotel. At the hotel, generous catering allowances mean that the household and its customers can eat comparatively well without using ordinary food coupons. Once those allowances disappear, the family lives on the same basic rations as everyone else and is frequently hungry. A Friday serving of fish and chips becomes one of the few dependable culinary pleasures, while foods that had once seemed ordinary become objects of intense desire.

Against this background, Pamela Wheeler Fellows’s Mother hears in a pub that a pig has just been slaughtered and decides to obtain a whole home-cured ham, despite the threat of imprisonment for the offence. The pig is no longer an abstract national resource or a source of scraps for collection; its slaughter has created a valuable and illicit piece of food. The ham’s importance comes from the family’s hunger, but also from the unequal structure of wartime consumption, in which money, information, and personal connections can open access to goods denied by the rationing system.

The Pram and the Ham

The problem is not acquiring the ham but moving it home without attracting attention. Pamela Wheeler Fellows’s Mother takes the baby’s new pram to the pub, covering it with clean white sheets so that it can serve as an innocent-looking vehicle for the concealed cargo. When the contact is late, she waits until after ten o’clock in the evening, while the pram remains outside the pub. Pamela Wheeler Fellows is sent to find her and fears that anyone who sees the unattended pram will assume that an irresponsible mother has left a baby outside a public house.

By the time Pamela Wheeler Fellows reaches the pub, the pram has been loaded with the illicit ham. The return journey is harder than the uphill trip because the heavy meat gives the pram additional weight and momentum. Pamela Wheeler Fellows’s Mother is petite, has been drinking while waiting, and must control the pram on a steep downhill road. The journey is noisy and conspicuous rather than discreet, though the family reaches home safely. Her amusement contrasts with Father’s alarm: she treats the adventure as comic, while he is convinced that the household may be sent to prison.

The ham immediately creates a second problem. Its strong, meaty smell spreads through the house and seems capable of passing through closed doors. The family imagines that neighbours are already on their way to report the offence, so they push the pram indoors and hang the ham in the cellarette, closing the door in the hope of containing the evidence. The attempt fails. The smell remains everywhere, turning the material success of the acquisition into a continuing danger and making the hidden object almost publicly visible.

Eating the Evidence

Giving the ham away is impossible, and the family concludes that the only practical way to eliminate the evidence is to eat it. The result is a month in which ham is served morning, noon, and night. At first the food has the status of a long-missed luxury; repeated consumption transforms it into an ordeal. By the end, the family is sick of it, and Pamela Wheeler Fellows never wants to see or taste ham again. The episode closes the distance between scarcity and excess: rationing creates the desperate wish for a whole ham, but the risks of obtaining one and the impossibility of preserving or sharing it turn abundance into punishment.

Narrative Significance

The episodes involving pigs show how wartime policy enters domestic life through ordinary objects and bodily needs. Household scraps are collected to fatten animals for the nation, while ration books and the loss of catering allowances make families newly dependent on restricted supplies. The illicit ham exposes the moral ambiguity of this system: the family’s act is unlawful, yet it is driven by hunger and by the disappearance of familiar food rather than by simple greed.

Pigs also help the memoir hold together two scales of experience. At the national level, they are part of a coordinated food campaign in which every household is expected to save scraps. At the family level, the slaughter of one pig produces a ham carried in a baby’s pram, a downhill struggle, a pervasive smell, fear of neighbours, and weeks of forced consumption. The animal is therefore neither merely a symbol nor a detached background detail. Its place in the story is material and consequential: the pig’s scarcity, slaughter, and transformation into food reorganize movement, secrecy, family relations, and memory, while revealing the ingenuity and absurdity through which civilians endured wartime shortages.