大象传媒

KATIE EVANS

My name is Katie Evans. I am 85 years old. I was born 1918. Some people think I am old. It has just been since I came out of hospital that I have started to feel my age. I had a lung infection and have to be on oxygen all of the time now just to help me breathe. I have been at St Peter鈥檚 residential home since February when it was decided that I could not care for myself any longer. While I like it here it is hard to give up my freedom and be dependent on others to do things for me that I always did for myself.
I originally came from Wales, Carnarven to be specific. The family I came from was very large. There were eleven children in my family. My mother was widowed when she was forty-six. My father had been a painter/decorator and had died from lead poisoning. Because there were so many of us, we had nothing, but then no one really had anything in those days. We were still happy even though we had little and had to work hard.

I married when I was 19 and we had a son. When the war began I stayed in Wales alone with my son. My husband drove buses. He could not sign up for the war because of his health, so during the war he drove the buses to the factories in the Wrexham area. After a while I came up and stayed with my sister. She was a bar maid at the Northumberland Arms, which I think is still standing. At first, it was hard to settle in. It wasn鈥檛 really bad being there. The wife of the owner would look after the children while we worked. I took a job as a domestic for a local doctor. He and his wife were not very kind. Because I needed the money, I did whatever they said. I cleaned their four bedroom house every day. I was supposed to work five days a week, but sometimes it would be six or seven days. I got paid two pounds a week no matter how many days I worked. The doctor鈥檚 house is still standing. I will never forget how hard I worked there. I did stand up to the doctor鈥檚 wife one day and told her it was past time for me to go home. She did not fire me and I was glad of that.
I saved up for a television for my children out of my wages. What was funny was by the time I got it and took it home to surprise them we did not even have electricity. I heard on the wireless at work when Prince Charles was born. I thought what a lucky baby he was. He would never want for anything. I can remember it being bitter cold all the time. I would wear my big heavy coat all day. There was no hot water, only cold. We had to burn coke for any heat there was because it went further. It was always freezing cold no matter what time of day it was. There was no toilet in the house and only the kitchen sink. The toilet was in a shed in the back garden.

Eventually my husband and I got our own small place that had electricity and hot water. We had three children, two girls and a boy. My husband was gone most of the time, so I raised our children on my own. Every Friday my son would go pick up our rations. I would write down exactly what we needed for the next week and he and his friend would walk down to get it. Even if you had money, there was nothing to buy. Everything went for the war. We were all equal. That was one of the good things about the war. We were all equal. We dared not waste a thing. Everything we had was used.

When the war was on, there were air raid sirens that went off at night. We would all go to the cellars and wait. There was a time that a bomb hit in Sunderland. I remember seeing the search-lights looking for planes that might bomb us. We were all scared during those times.

Even with all the bad, hard and scary times we had back then, I think today is much worse. There are so many bad people doing bad things. The simple times were better.

I now live in St Peter鈥檚 Court Residential Home in Wallsend where I am happy.
I would love to hear from some of my friends I made during the War.

As told to the student鈥檚 of Churchill Community College on Friday 28th November 2003.

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