大象传媒

It was a Monday morning round about Easter as I was on holiday from school. As was usual for a Monday it was raining. My Mother went upstairs and suddenly shouted down to me to bring up all the pots and pans I could as there was water comming through all the ceilings. All day we spent emptying the pots and placing empty ones to catch the water comming through the ceilings.
My Father arrived home from work about seven o'clock and my Mother told him about the water problem. He went up into the loft to have a look and found that we had a lot of tiles in the roof broken. About two weeks previously a house down the road had a direct hit and he assumed that the damage was caused by the debries thrown up from the explosion. Anyway he went down to the garage and got some roofing felt and started to patch the holes in the roof. In those days there was no lighting in the lofts nor floorboards, so my Father was working with a candle balancing on the rafters. About nine o'clock the air raid sirens went and soon we could hear the drone of German aircraft. My Father who by that time was thoroughly fed up and very wet poked the candle through a hole in the roof and said "Here I am Gerry bl***y well come and get me". Of course the wind and rain put out the candle so he was left in pitch darknes balancing on a rafter until he could get the candle re-lit.
He didn't finish the repairs until after eleven o'clock and my Mother said "Come on now you have finished lets go down the shelter". My Father who was very fed up said "I am not going down no Bl***y shelter tonight, make up a bed under the table and we will sleep there instead". So that is what she did.
It was a very noisy night and about one o'clock there was a very loud scream of a bomb and the house shuddered, my Father said "God that was close". About an hour later there was a knocking on the back door and when my Father opened it there were policemen and Air rain wardens there. One said to my Father "anyone in your shelter mate?" My father said "no we all in the house". The Policeman said "thats lucky cos you havent got a shelter now"
In the morning I went into the garden and where the shelter had been there was a thirty foot bomb crater. Surprisingly not a window in the house had been broken.
That was the first night of the Blitz that we had not been down to the shelter, if we had I would not be here writing this story today.
What a lucky escape.
Of course when I went back to school all my friends had to come and see my lovely bomb crater!

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