Chapter Four

Now there had been villages in that bit of land between the two defences, and people had been living there. What happened to those people, do you think? Do you suppose they were happy to find that their homes suddenly lay between two defences, neither of which they could cross? How do you suppose they would live? When there were suddenly no shops to go to and no gas stations and no post offices and no banks and no shopping centres or supermarkets or even a shoe store. How would they live, when there suddenly were none of these things that we all take for granted?

Their cars were useless because there were no gas stations, and anyway not many places they could go to. They could not send mail to anyone, or get money out of the bank – which would have been pointless anyway, since there were no shops. They could not go and buy clothing or shoes or toys or even the newspaper, But worst of all, they could not go and buy food and drink. They now had to grow their food themselves, or find it in the woods and fields.

But imagine all the things you can’t grow on your own field or in your own garden! They never had any chocolate or sweets, no tea or coffee in the morning, or beer and wine in the evening. No oranges and pineapple and bananas, no capsicum or courgettes or broccoli or eggplant or any of those nice vegetables that you have so grown used to. All that they could grow in their fields and gardens was grain, and potatoes and carrots and cabbage. In the summer they could find some herbs for a salad, and berries for dessert, and in autumn of course there were mushrooms, and apples and pears from their fruit trees – but in winter they had to live off potatoes, carrots and cabbage every day! Also, they had to grind all their grain themselves for there were no mills inbetween the two defences. And imagine how much work that is, grinding all that grain between two stones! And then of course they still had to bake their own bread from the flour they got in this way. For drink, all they had was water from their wells – very healthy I am sure, but also very boring! Only in autumn they could have some apple juice, which mostly didn’t even last until Christmas.