Food and drink

Barry

"A lot of places wouldn't have survived as long as they did without the sales of ice creams and hot dogs. It was a nuisance at times but it was one of those necessary evils."

Vic

"Of course you could never buy ice cream in the shop in winter in the 1930s. It was a summer treat, Eldorado's or Wall's, there was no other ice cream. Nowadays I go to the Filmworks at Greenwich and they come in with great big tubs of popcorn – to me when I go to the cinema I don't want any distraction – I just want to see the film. Nowadays, they make as much money on the sweets and snacks and peanuts as they do on the admission charges."

Peggy

"We didn't take anything in with us to eat because you had usherettes come round with trays – ice cream and sweets and peanuts. Peanuts tickled me. Went to one cinema with my mum and my aunt. Her hat had a rather large brim and it was a noisy film so we didn't know what was happening… but peanut shells were rattling down on her hat. We got up, went out and when my aunt got into the street she bent down to pick something up and all these shells rained down on the floor. There was this balcony above. They were just throwing the shells over the balcony. I expect it was some boys!"

Betty

"My husband said that his sister and her boyfriend, when they used to go to the cinema, they took a suitcase, I say that's carrying it a bit too far. It was very large bag and inside was sandwiches, crisps, oranges, and apples to eat. You could always smell oranges in the cinema."

Charles

"We never had anything to eat. Couldn't afford it."

Vic

"I had to run errands all through the week to get sixpence. It was a penny on the bus, penny bag of peanuts, tuppence at the cinema and that left you the penny bus fare home. … We'd go down to Woolworths in Woolwich and you could get a quarter of a pound of shelled peanuts for a penny and three bread rolls for a penny."

Ronald

"We used to get a cup of tea in the afternoon – priced about nine pence. A cup of tea was brought round by the ushers."

Lil

"Well sweets only cost tuppence a quarter, a penny in today's money. So mainly I think we would have bought an ice cream, which wouldn't have been very expensive – in a tub. We were discussing this in the Lewisham Theatre last week, that tub would have been made of like, reinforced cardboard and the stick, the little spoon, would have been wooden. Now it's plastic."

Peggy

In those days there was an awful lot of smoking going on. That's where the clouds of smoke came from. Never mind your lungs. You never thought about your lungs.