大象传媒

This story is submitted by a volunteer on behalf of Radio Bristol Action Desk at City of Bristol College.

I was born in 1940. I shouldn't have been born really. At the outbreak of war in 1939 my mother - a live-in maid - and my father decided to get married. My mother was going to carry on working, he would be called up, and my mother would save the marriage allowance from the army to go towards saving for a home to live in together. They got married in the November, my father continued to live with his mother and my mother continued to be a live in maid, so that they could save for a house.
But during the new years eve celebrations following declaration of war in the September - I was conceived. So that put a spanner in the works. So they then had to buy a house which my grandmother helped to pay for and eventually my father was called up and went off to war. So my mother was in the house with a new baby, and had to take in lodgers. A lady who worked at the Bristol Aircraft Company at Filton came to live with us.

With all the shortages, if anybody in the road laid their hands on a treat - peaches, spam, sugar, anything that was in short supply - they tended to share it out with the neighbours. I can remember you had to have clothes coupons - and also for some household stuff - so families would often pool coupons for clothes or special occasions, so that things could be shared out.

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