In other news....Queen thanked for WW2 bananas 65 years on

Queen thanked for WW2 bananas 65 years on

By Laura Clout
Last Updated: 3:38am GMT 25/01/2008

When Elizabeth Hyde presented a bunch of bananas to the Queen yesterday, she was able to return a favour bestowed 65 years ago.

In 1943, when she was recovering from shrapnel wounds at Lewisham Hospital, south-east London, Mrs Hyde met the late Queen Elizabeth, who gave her a banana - a fruit that had become rare in wartime Britain.

The bananas were a gift from Princess Elizabeth to children at the hospital. Mrs Hyde, 69, thanked her in person yesterday when she visited Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn, Norfolk.

She said: "I don't suppose we had seen bananas before. I can't recall whether I liked it but my little sister didn't like hers."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/25/nqueen125.xml

My mum and dad were born in Hull, North Yorkshire in 1934 and grew up during the war. Up until I was a child in the 1970s, bananas were still sacred, mystical things, endowed with tremendous power. My dad, by the way, hated them then and still hates them now. Nevertheless, they are still sacred to him.

in the U.S. during the war too. They pretty much disappeared for the duration. Before the war the filling for Twinkies was a banana cream filling. Once the war broke out and there were no bananas, the company switched to the filling you now get in a Twinkie.

I learn more on DU than I did in school :)