Any Danger of Getting a Cup of Tea?

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright, and fiction writer. She is the
author of Magic and What’s in a Name?

Edward Coppard was 14 when his father pulled him from school and set him
to work in the family fish shop and to buy in London’s Billingsgate
Market. Edward eventually ran his own shop in the Cockney district of
The Elephant and Castle, became an aircraft mechanic and anti-aircraft
balloon operator in World War II, and moved to Canada in the late 1950s.
One of his daughters has written this memoir of her family, much of
which is based on Edward’s anecdotes and his taped reminiscences.

The history tends to overwhelm the characters at the start and the
family tree would have been helpful here instead of hidden at the back
of the book. The story takes on more flesh as it moves into the life of
the author and her personal memories of siren-suits and gas masks in the
Blitz, eating winkles with a pin in Scotland, hotwater bottles and bed
socks during a cold winter in Yorkshire, and the powdered eggs and other
novelties of rationing throughout the war.

When Edward was demobilized from the army, he felt he had “nothing to
show for it,” and worse, his fish shop had been destroyed. Two years
later, his wife had a baby at the age of 41, which left her feeling
trapped once again after shepherding three daughters through the war.
The good news is that they both created a new life for themselves when
they moved to Canada, where the author became a teacher and her brother
became a musician.

Montemurro excels when she spells out such mysteries of life as the
movement of fish in Billingsgate, the problems of handling a wartime
balloon from a yacht in the Firth of Forth, and the ritual of her
grandfather winding his grandfather clock. For older readers, the book
will revive many memories; for those who did not live through that time,
this breezy, clearly written recollection is a great way to absorb some
history through the personal stories and domestic details that are
seldom dealt with in history books.