Bank Holiday Weather

We have had an awful lot of rain over these last few days, but it did give me a thought as I am going to see my mate tomorrow. His Mum is always pleased to see me and I try to think of something different to talk to her about. With the rain reminded me of when us children, when allowed to, went out to play. If it was raining though, no play at all. What my elder Sister used to ask my Mother regular was this if the rain was about done. "Is there enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of Navy Blue trousers." My Mother would look and nearly always be correct with her decision. I have not heard of anything like this in recent years. It will be interesting to see if my mate's Mum ever heard of this saying.
 Another thing that used to happen was that my Aunty's second Husband. She wasn't my Aunty really as she married my Mother's Brother but they were divorced. Anyway we always called her Aunty and she was nice. Her Husband would try to go poaching and occasionally we would have a rabbit. This by the way, was either during the War or just after. My Mother would gut and skin the rabbit, taking great care of the fur, she would then stuff the rabbit and sew the rabbit up then roast it. As kids we thought it was beautiful. The rabbit skin(fur) was then taken to a local rags and bones firm and sold for 6d. We would save anything that was of no use at all and take them down to the rag and bone firm. As every home had different bins or tins to save everything that could be recycled. I bet everyone over the age of 70 will have a button tin. We had a button tin a paper bag tin, a string bin a greased proof paper bin these were used for wrapping steamed puddings and the old fashioned jam roly poly. This was actually boiled, not baked as they think it was. It was wrapped in lots of greased proof papers. These were saved from butter, margarine and lard packets. They were all served in 1/2lb packets.  I know that my mate's Mum used to save enerything up. If I remember I will ask if she had jam roly poly. To finish I must tell you this. When I was in the restaurant trade we had a customer and we had Baked Jam Roll on the menu. He told us about when he was young he used to have Jam Roly Poly on a Monday. He told us his Mother used to boil one in a copper after boiling the white clothes as there were 7 in his family. We only used a large saucepan. By the way it was served with cold milk. It may sound awful but I can assure you with the Jam Roly Poly coming out of a boiling saucepan of water it cooled the red hot jam down a treat. More soon.