Us Scots try to avoid "The Smoke" (we got air pollution enough in "Auld Reekie") but does "half inch" perhaps rhyme with "pinch"? For shame! (We call that a "Lunch Box Special").

Seriously, the Blitz had to have been God-awful. When I and my new wife wandered all over the Old Country by thumb in the summer of '68, there were still "bomb sites" in London and the Midlands. Sobering (and I didn't sober easily in them days!).