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Recently my grandsons (Robert 7 and Matthew 5) visited for a few days during the school half term and as I kissed them 'good night' and tucked them in at the end of a very full day I was searching for inspiration for their bedtime story. I looked down at these two lovely faces, now snuggled and warm and in bed after a day riding on steam engines, snacks at a little café, and perhaps tomorrow fishing, the Wallace and Gromit film and the usual sweets. Sweets - that was what the story would be about as this event had made a huge impression on me as a child and has stayed with me all my life.

And so my story began: I was a baby of nine months old when World War II broke out, but when I was as old as Matthew (5), I associated Saturday mornings with a visit to the sweet shop with my sister. We were handed pennies and a ration book which we were warned not to lose or there wouldn't be any more sweets for a long time. We would run along to the sweet shop on the corner for 'Two separate two ounces of dolly mixtures'. The sweets were weighed and transferred to two pointed bags. We then passed over the money and the ration book. We would watch, noses on the edge of the counter, as the shopkeeper got a big pair of scissors to cut out, very carefully, the little 4 ounce coupon — our sweet ration for the week. When we got back home we handed the book to mum and she would ask us to save some of the sweets for our Saturday afternoon visit to the 'pictures'.

One day we were told that we could go for some sweets, but we didn't need to take the ration book — this was the end of sweet rationing. We were puzzled! You always needed a ration book for sweets. Outside the sweet shop was a very big car, but as we entered we couldn't believe our eyes - all the sweets had gone. The jars on the shelves were empty. We later learned that the man in the 'very big car' had bought everything in the shop.

My grandsons' faces were a study as they tried to come to grips with the story about ration books and coupons and sweets once a week and men in big cars buying all the sweets. I had hoped to move on to other events in my early life, and did mention briefly 'clothes coupons' and 'evacuation', but the deluge of 'almost indignant' questions came thick and fast and I realised that if there was going to be any sleep that night I had to save all my other childhood experiences during the War years, for another night, things like Belgian refugees living with the family, sirens, black air raid blinds, my daddy as a special policeman, my uncles in the army and navy, etc. I now have enough inspiration for stories for as long as they want to hear them.

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