大象传媒

I was a year and one month old when the world went to war with itself, so I have no memory of the start of the mutual insanity, but I was seven years old by the time it finished. So I grew up believing, Uniforms, bomb-sites, air-raids, Black-outs, sandbags at doorways, and sticky-taped windows, were normal, and part of my world.

We lived on the edge of Epping Forest in Essex, in a road called Chestnut Avenue, the houses were big old Edwardian, bay window fronted comfortable family homes. Ours had been my paternal Grandmothers who had passed away two years before I was born. My Aunt and Uncle (Fathers sister.) lived close by. Uncle George and Dad had installed an Anderson shelter in our garden, to which my Grandmother, (mother's Mum.) would come, to sleep, if it looked as though Grandad, who was an Air Raid warden, was going to be out all night on duty.

Mothers Father had been a regular in the Army in India, before the First world War, and had fought all through that as well, with the Heavy Artillery, so was unstoppable when it came to "doing his bit" for the second. We were getting quite a bit of raids during this period, Mother said it was being said that the reason was because the Germans had built their factories in their forests for camouflage, and naturally expected us to have done the same. I remember all the bomb craters in the forest when I was older.

Uncle George arrived one morning on our doorstep after a night鈥檚 raid, to ask Dad if he would lend a hand with a problem with his outside loo, it had unexpectedly started to lean sideways, and all the water had disappeared, the discussion concluded excess rain had caused the subsidence. The repair party set off with tools and determination. Two grown men digging can soon achieve a fair sized hole, and when they encountered a round manhole cover a certain amount of kicking and banging took place, before one of the interested spectators suggested that maybe "that was the cause of the leaning loo" Simultaneously my Uncle and Father looked at one another with horror, realising that what they were standing on was an un-exploded bomb, which had dropped outside the garden wall at an angle and because of the softness of the soil, burrowed under the wall and hit the side of the loo, tipping it up and failing to go off.

The whole street was evacuated, until the Bomb squad came to get it out and cart it off to the forest, to detonate it. Mother laughed all evening after seeing the look on dad's face, when he came home to tell her. Laughter was a potent secret weapon, in those days, it kept people sane.

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