Rationing

Queuing for food
Rationing had started but there were no ration books like there were in World War Two, where everyone got a small amount of necessities per family. I remember queuing at the butcher's before going to school, until my mother could relieve me. Rumours of deliveries got round, and one day I joined a queue at a grocer's and came back triumphantly with a stone jar of treacle. When we opened it, the smell was so vile it had to be tipped down the drain!
Marjory Batchelor - A Life Behind Bars

Ration books and the National Kitchen
I recall during the latter part of the First World War the ration books we had.  They were oblong in shape and had a sort of faint paisley pattern on the pages.

Rationing was not so good then, as the shops were not open all the time. When the word spread that Maypole had margarine, everyone would queue outside, for one portion per person. When all sold out the shop closed again. Police would stand by to see to law and order.

My mother would give two or three of us 6d. to buy it and we were told to space ourselves in the queue so as not appear to be together, or we might not get two lots. But with our sized family, it did not go far. There was also the plum and apple jam in tins when we would queue again.

Next to the Police Station in Preston Circus was the National Kitchen where one could have a meal or take food away. As you entered, your money was exchanged for a metal disc with a hole in the middle.

Every time I went it was always pease pudding and faggots which was put in the large dish I had taken and covered with a cloth to take home. Oh how I hated it!
Daisy Noakes - The Town Beehive

Shopkeepers problems of favouritism or social exclusion during rationing
The marginal shopkeeper could not afford to risk the loss of even one customer by showing any favouritism or social exclusiveness. Wartime rationing posed particular problems for such shopkeepers, who wished to reward faithful customers by supplying them with 'short goods', without appearing to be unfair to newer customers. Clearly shopkeepers were restricted in their social activities because of the high degree of competition in their business.
Neil Griffiths - Shops Book

Food was short and there was rationing of certain goods. It was rather haphazard and you snatched what you could, when you could, meat, sugar, butter and margarine were short and mother would send us down to the shops as soon as she knew that a consignment was in. We lived near the town so we were near Liptons, Pearkes and Home and Colonial.

I remember feeling hungry on occasions, but it wasn't because there wasn't good food around. Most people kept a few chickens and so there were fresh eggs and a lot of people had allotments so there was fresh vegetables.

Money was short and so mother took in visitors from London who came to escape from the 'Taubes' bombs and Zeppelins. My sister and I slept in my parents' bed and Mother slept in a single bed in the room. This left two rooms that she could let and we had visitors from London, who stayed for several weeks. I think they brought their ration books with them, and bought the food for mother to cook.

We knitted socks for the troops and mittens for the milk ladies who took over the delivery of milk when the men left. Women also worked on the trams and at Allen West on munitions and many did nursing.
Blighty Brighton