大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples War website by Mike Kerins on behalf of Agnes Kerins and has been added to the site with her permission.

In 1941 we all returned from Wales to Manchester. My Auntie Agnes was reunited with her husband, as were we with my father, except we had nowhere permanent to live. I was only five but remember the tedious daily journey to the town hall looking for accommodation, but again like so many in the war years we were reliant on the kindness of either friends or relatives.
We were offered a room at the home of my Auntie Hilda and Uncle Norbert Horton. They had three children: Brian (18), Tony (17) and the youngest Kathleen who was only three. I remember one gloomy evening travelling down to 26 Marley Road in Levenshulme, rattling along in one of the really old trams. Levenshulme at this time was quite a nice place to live; the terraced house had three bedrooms and a reasonably large garden at the back and having out room we felt that we weren鈥檛 too cramped. Things however must become a little strained between the adults as not that long ago after we were asked to leave, unfortunately for us this happened in the middle of the night.
Luckily for us my fathers sister Maria heard of our plight and she and her husband, who at this time didn鈥檛 have a family, and so had some room, offered us accommodation back in Collyhurst. And so yet again we were to be lodged in another shop.
This itinerant life during the war wasn鈥檛 unusual for many people. There were few who owned their own homes or even had all that many possessions so moving around although inconvenient was not necessarily as big an upheaval as it would be for the people today.

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