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When war broke out, we were living in County Durham near Billingham where my father worked — at a very important, large chemical and explosives factory (ICI). In 1941, my mother took my brother and myself on a voluntary evacuation to stay with my aunt in Stockport, of all places, to avoid the bombing. My parents felt that Billingham and district would surely be a target for German bombing, while Stockport would be less subject to attacks. They couldn’t have been more wrong - Durham was relatively unscathed while the North West took a real beating. I was only 5 in 1941, so I do not remember much about my school in Stockport - I found later that it was called ‘Glenwood School’. I do remember an unexploded bomb falling in our street and being evacuated to a local cinema during the night; the previous evening we had all been to see Walt Disney’s ‘Pinocchio’ and I naively thought that we were going to get a free midnight showing! On the way back in the morning we passed several houses where stray incendiary bombs had fallen; there were burnt and blackened rooms, and still smouldering beds and furniture had been brought outside the houses.
I can recall one air raid that occurred when we were living back in County Durham. We didn’t have an air raid shelter - my designated safety position was in the cupboard under the stairs. I was given a mattress, a pillow, a blanket and a hot water bottle, and left to sleep through the air raid (no bombs actually fell in our vicinity). However, the hot water bottle I was given was a rigid one of aluminium enclosed in a knitted woollen cover; part of the aluminium became exposed and came into contact with my the skin of my hand while I slept, and when I awoke I had an enormous blister on the back of my left hand. The scar from the blister can be still be seen today, and when in a frivolous mood I call it my ‘war wound’!

Waste paper… !
While we were living in Stockport, my (elder) brother joined the cubs, so my mother was very happy to contribute the used stubs of our ration books to the local scouts’ waste-paper drive. Unfortunately, she also gave them our current books by mistake! When the error was discovered, the scout leaders were immediately contacted and the whole family spent several frantic hours searching through a roomful of bags until finally our precious new books came to light.

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