大象传媒

These memories were submitted on behalf of Jill Wilson with her permission.

1 When the bombing was bad we went to Oxford to stay with my granny. The doodle bugs became very frequent and my mother took my sister and myself on the train to Liverpool Street heading for Oxford. I could hear a doodle bug above the noise of the train just after we left Bethnal Green station. Looking out of the windows on either side of the carriage I could see the tips of the V-bomb's wings immediately above. The train speeded up faster and faster and at break-neck speed swung round a bend. We turned right just as the engine cut out. Shortly afterwards we heard the explosion. No-one else looked out of the windows, no-one said a word - and I didn't say what I'd seen until afterwards.

2 My mother was very inventive. One year when rationing was very bad and you didn't always get what you were theoretically entitled to because it just wasn't there to buy, she made a Christmas Pudding with dried prunes instead of the usual dried fruit. My sister and I were given the few prunes she'd managed to get and a pair of scissors each. We cut the prunes into small bits - the sizes corresponding with raisins, sultanas and currants.

3 People don't believe me now but for the last Christmas of the war I went to my London grandmother's for dinner in my school uniform. I was growing fast and all my clothing coupons were needed for school clothes - I hadn't anything else that would fit. My sister and girl cousins did somewhat better - my outgrown clothes were passed from one to another as they grew to fit them.

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