Word: petrol
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...again last week after nearly a decade of nocturnal gloom. Hoping to entertain 130,000 U.S. guests and 430,000 from Europe, the British government, which had taken over most hotels during the war, had turned almost all of them back again. Clothing was at last unrationed, but not petrol: visitors would get the 1948 allowance of 600 miles for the first two weeks, 400 for the second, plus enough gas to go to &. from their furthest destination. Meat was scarce, British cooking was as dull as ever, and prices were comparatively high. But the intellectual fare was good...
...Daily Express' irrepressible "Beachcomber" did what he could to explain the government's new multicolored gasoline program. "Considerable confusion," he wrote, "is being caused by the new green petrol which changes to yellow when mixed with the blue dual-purpose petrol. It is difficult to analyze the mixture on the spot and the position is complicated by the similarity between this petrol in its yellow stage and the red petrol which becomes yellow when mixed with the new grey petrol which must be mixed with brown petrol for pleasure trips of more than one-seventh of a mile...
...home and placed bets in the football pools. One lucky Londoner won ?55,000, which, as the Daily Graphic pointed out, was almost exactly what the late Lord Passfield (Sidney Webb) left in his will. There was a public outcry because the Quantock Hunt (staghounds) had been allowed petrol rations of 7½ gallons for each deer bagged. But British huntsmen were scheduling more than 100 chases between Easter and the end of April. In Bavaria, the horse-racing season opened; some 100,000 racegoers bet a total of 1½ million marks the first day. "Never before...
...British motorists, the Government's ending of the "basic petrol ration" last fall had seemed the last heartbreaking straw in the load of enforced joylessness. Except for business and in hardship cases, they would not get one drop of gas for their cars. Even "basic" had been skimpy. The driver of a 30-miles-to-the-gallon Austin could go only 270 miles a month. With the end of "basic" he had nothing for a drive to the station, an occasional shopping trip, or a weekend spin in the country with the family...
...Sundays in the country Rank drives five miles to the Reigate Methodist Church (in wartime he cycled to save petrol) to teach his Sunday-school class. The Reverend J. Eric Dixon does not consider Arthur an unmixed blessing. "The press," he snorts, "is always down here badgering us. That's why it's such a bad Sunday school." But the children climb all over the teacher. Chirped little Peter Robinson: "He's a real smasher...