´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Vijiha Bashir, at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland on behalf of Joyce Fraser from Johnstone and has been added to the site with the permission of Johnstone History Society. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Our family when War was declared consisted of:

Father, 38 years of age
Sister, 5years old
Mother, 32 years of age and myself, 9 years old.

My father was 38 years old when the war started. He was too old to be called up to serve in the forces and we had moved from Govan to Anniesland in June of that year to be nearer my father’s place of work — Albion Motors. This was a major change for the family as we had lived in a room and kitchen inside toilet flat and now we lived in a newly built three apartment flat with all mod cons. My mother did not keep too well as she had had a miscarriage just before we moved house. My sister and I loved our new surrounding and we were just a short distance from a fruit farm and the Forth & Clyde Canal at Temple. We made new friends during the school holidays and everything was transformed overnight when it was declared.

We were evacuated to Girvan. My aunt Mary and her baby daughter had returned to Girvan from Plymouth to her foster mother, Maggie’s home for the duration of the war. Her husband, Uncle Robert was a fulltime naval officer, and he thought it would be safer for Mary and the baby to be in Scotland.

Maggie was a lovely lady who let out rooms in a big rambling house and she was the mother of an illegitimate child who had been adopted and living in Australia, she made up for this loss by fostering a number of orphaned children. When she was too old to take foster children she let out the rooms in her house.

Mary arranged with Maggie that my sister and I should come to Girvan as evacuees and we were made very welcome, but compared to our own home it was Spartan. There was no heating in our bedroom in the dead of winter. No hot water bottles and no bath or hot water form the tap. Gas mantle lamps and one coal fire in the kitchen of such a large and rambling house. Maggie’s bachelor brother took us to church three times a day on a Sunday, the morning service, Sunday school and the evening service. We had to help with the housework and we made our beds by candlelight. We had lived a very comfortable almost spoiled existence up till then. All Maggie’s foster children kept in touch and she was a loving substitute mother to them as children and on into their adult lives.

The School Teachers coped well with the increased number of pupils evacuated to Girvan. It was a most difficult time for all of the children, pupils and parents and the householders taking responsibility for the care of so many little strangers who had had to leave their homes to come and live with them.

I joined the Brownies and just before Christmas the Brown Owl invited the Brownies to a party at her house which turned out to be a Castle just outside Girvan. The party was a very happy and memorable occasion.

We returned home for Christmas and did not go back to Girvan. My mother had joined the Red Cross Party and spent one day a week sewing with a sewing machine in a room in the Glasgow School of Art. It was hard work and the sewing was of the highest standard. My father, apart from his day job at Albion Motors, was directed to the Special Constables based at Maryhill and spent an allocated number of hours within the month on duty in the surrounding area.

We joined Anniesland Cross Church where my sister Jean and I became members of the Anniesland Junior Choir. Dad was a member of the Albion Male Voice Choir and they arranged fund raising events at the Motor Factory. Jean and I also attended Temple School.

The garden in the School grounds was converted to a vegetable garden and the older children, as part of the war effort, grew vegetables. My mother was a good baker and had what was called a back to back oven which was controlled by three levers. The heat from the fire could be directed to the living room or even to the oven and she mastered how to adjust it to different temperatures. She was a member of the Town’s Women’s Guild and one of the recipes she tried from the Guild, was making a mock banana mix with parsnips and banana flavouring which she bought from the health and grain shop at Anniesland Cross.

She also made sweets with a mock marzipan paste and this consisted of Soya bean flour and Almond flavouring.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.