大象传媒

A short time later HMS Cricket quickly became established . One evening my mother answered the door and there was a Chief Petty Officer making an enquiry to see if my mother would rent him a room so that he could have his wife and daughter near him. So that is how Mr Edwards and her daughter Sheila from Sheffield became our lodgers for several years.

I suppose as a child the more serious things would wash over our heads, meanwhile the more trivial things manage to stick in one鈥檚 memory. I had an aunt and uncle who had a farm a few miles away from us. This was mainly a pig breeding and fattening farm, of course every spare acre that they had was directed by the ministry into food production to help feed the nation. Because my aunt had spare capacity in the farm house she had to take an evacuee boy from the East End of London. I think he came from a poor background. So when he first arrived and found that he could have a fresh egg each morning for his breakfast and plenty of fresh milk to drink he thought he was in heaven. That was until the little lad went out with my uncle to milk the cow that they kept for their own use, playing a joke my uncle squirted milk towards the lad. It was then that the boy realised where milk came from and not from bottles as he had always thought, after that he would not touch milk.
After that my uncle thought it best that the lad did not go near the chicken shed, but the buildings were a bit ramshackle and some of the chickens would get out and lay their eggs in odd spots. As hens cackle loudly when they lay an egg, the lad happened to look over just as the hen stood up and the egg dropped and another lad with him ran over and picked it up and gave it to the London lad who was so shocked to realise where it came from and it was still hot, after that he refused to eat eggs.

Another thing that I didn鈥檛 understand at the time was at the beginning of the war, cars started to appear on the farm and after a few months every spare space around the farm yard was full, there were about fifty cars parked. They lay there for the duration of the war, afterwards they were gradually taken away. I suppose I was that bit older and I realised that the cars had been bought up cheaply when nobody except those on war work were allowed to use cars, by a business man from Southampton. After the war there no new cars being produced so these cars were reconditioned and I should think the man made a fortune and I suspect Uncle done quite well renting out storage.

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