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These reminiscences have been taped and typed up by my daughter.

I worked in London when War was declared although my home was in Manchester. I was working for the Food (Defence Plans) Dept of the Board of Trade. Then when War was declared it became the Ministry of Food.

With the War came ‘the blackout’. The blackout was bad. It was very dark , no street lights, no lights on cars. Everyone had to have blackout curtains as well as ordinary ones — or they had shutters . At the time I was working at Millbank and had to find my way back to the tube station and it was very difficult in the winter time. I sustained one or two injuries from lampposts!

I asked for a transfer back to Manchester and I was transferred to Inland Revenue. I came back to Manchester early in 1940, but my parents were about to be evacuated to Penrith with the company (Thomas Hedley - soap manufacturers) my father worked for. My mother and father were concerned about me being left on my own, so my mother organised a family to come and live in the house. We didn’t get on at all, and they eventually moved out and then I was on my own for most of the War. My father used to pay part of the rent, so that they could keep the house to come back to after the War.

I remember the bombings in Manchester in December 1940. There was a lot of terraced property on the main streets. After the bombings it looked almost as though there had been a snowstorm; there were huge piles of glass from the broken windows and these were piled at the sides of the road. Everybody's windows were out. Places were boarded up for a while, and people often had to leave their houses and stay with friends or relatives. Later. everyone had brown sticky paper on the panes of glass, stuck criss- cross to avoid the glass splintering.
I also remember going walking down Platt lane after a land mine had dropped. Where there had been four houses, there was nothing except rags and bits of clothing hanging on trees. Landmines came down on parachutes and so you didn’t hear them coming. They were devastating.

In older properties, such as in Ardwick, many people had cellars or you could go under the stairs when there was a bombing raid. If there were no cellars the council would provide shelters close by. We had an Anderson shelter in Fallowfield. They were dug about three feet into the ground. It was made of corrugated, galvanised steel. The Council put it up , because we had a Council house; maybe that is why. We fitted it out ourselves with bunks, mattresses, cushions, blankets. We would take food, candles, matches and flasks of hot drinks.

At one time we had air-raid alarms nearly every night and consequently suffered from lack of sleep when we were at work the next day. We were never able to sleep in the shelters as the continued noise from aeroplanes and anti aircraft guns was loud and often frightening. When the 'all clear' sounded -sometimes an hour or so, sometimes after several hours - we thankfully returned into the house and to our beds! Sometimes the airraid sirens would sound, and we went to the shelters, but the German planes were going overhead to say Liverpool, but we still had to go into the shelters and wait.

On one occasion we went to the cinema Quay Street to see 'Gone with the Wind' and when we came out, the air raid alarm went off and, after going down the shelter, it was too late to go home, so I and stayed at my fiance's home in Ardwick. My fiance had originally intended to take me home on the crossbar of his bike, but his mother objected to that, so I stayed the night there. Afterwards I thought my mother and father must have been worried stiff because there were no telephones to tell them I was safe. The next day, I went off to work and my fiance went on his bike to tell my parents what had happened.

I worked with Inland Revenue in Sunlight House, Quay Street. (The owner of the building was Joe Sunlight) I was a clerk/typist. I was promoted during the War to be tax officer. The rate of income tax was 6/6d ordinary and the higher rate was 10 shillings in the pound. The surtax for companies was 100%. The government instituted a system of post war credits so that, after the War, you would get back the extra money that you paid. There were no computers. There were great big books (about 2 foot wide) with all the assessments written in ink (later in the War they were typed when they instituted PAYE). There was no mechanical or electronic calculation. All had to be done in the head, and it all had to balance.

If you were a married man you got £30 post war credit per year and the single was £20 - it all depended upon you having paid the tax in the first place. This all had to be entered in above the personal assessment in purple ink. We issued post war credit notice to people each year. I ended up with several post war credit certificates - all in my husband's name, because in those days all assesments were in the husband's name.

My salary in Inland Revenue was about £30.00 a month. My husband was earning 9d per day in the Army - then later on it was 1/- (5p today's money) a day. People in the Army didn’t pay tax!

Towards the end of the war the Civil Service opened a canteen on the top floor in the new Kendal Milne store in Deansgate. This was a building, which was opposite the existing store, that they had never moved into it because of the War. I often had my lunch there. because no food coupons were necessary for meals out.

As well as doing my ordinary work and lots of overtime, we all had to do firewatching. I did firewatching at work and at church. Firewatching was started after the incendiary bombings. At the end of December 1940 they rained firebombs down. If the fire bombs could be extinguished as soon as they came down, there was no problem. Some of the buildings that weren't protected, were totally destroyed. We were supplied with stirrup pumps to put out fires.

Things you couldn’t get - elastic was one. Everyone's knickers were held up by elastic in those days - so that was a problem! There were no hairgrips or curlers . You could only get Lisle stockings (cotton knitted) so a lot of people didn’t wear stockings. I just wore little bootees to keep my feet warm and no stockings. There were no sweets, bananas or oranges.

Coal was rationed, and on one occasion, one of the girls at the office said that they had a lots of coal eggs- these were made from coal dust, and pressed into egg shapes with something like cement. They would burn if you'd got some coal to burn with them. They were not rationed. I was told that if I went to their house I could have as many as I could carry. I went with a suitcase. I filled the suitcase with the coal eggs and came back by two buses - one from Kingsway then another bus down Platt lane - and then had to walk back to Prestbury Avenue! There was no private motoring and no petrol, so we all walked or went on the bus.

Everyone had coal fires in those days. The coal man would come round when he'd got coal, and would put perhaps one bag in each bunker. You couldn't guarantee that you would have coal. The house would be cold to come home to and you would have to get the fire lit first. There was no central heating.

We got married in 1942 and the wedding breakfast was hard to arrange. For our wedding reception, which had to take place at short notice, because my fiance's Army leave was notified only about two weeks in advance. I spent the whole of one day at work on the phone! I phoned all the caterers in the vicinity to see if they could put on a reception for us. Eventually I got a cafe at Chorlton-cum-Hardy above a shop who could do the lunch for about 30 or us - ham and salad lunch.

The caterers would have a certain ration and a cake was made probably some sort of fruit cake but not very rich. Instead of icing they put a silver doiley on the top and frills on the sides. It was the same for everybody - you just accepted it. One of our acquaintances sent us 4/-(20p in today's money) as a wedding present.

I visited my mother-in-law once a week, who lived in Ardwick. She would buy a rabbit and cook it for me for my evening meal. My husband's pay from his old firm (Hogg and Mitchell) before the War would be sent to my mother-in-law: £1.3.4d. She would bank the £1 for my husband, and she would have the 3/4d for herself. Out of that she would make me an evening meal. It was usually rabbit and she would cook it in the fireside oven. She had always been a good customer at the local fish and greengrocer's shop , and would get a rabbit 'under the counter' (not on the ration) from the shopkeeper.

The War finishing was a sort of anticlimax we knew for a week or so before hand that it was coming up and when it did, I don’t remember anything much in the way of a celebration. It was several months before my husband was demobbed and we then moved to a home of our own in Reddish. We bought a 1938 semi-detached house for £1,050 (this sort of house would have cost £350 when built) but houses were in short supply after the War, and we were glad to pay the price. Also we were told that the lady who sold the house noticed that our application was in a second-hand Army envelope of my husband's. She noticed this and decided that we should be the lucky couple simply because he had been in the Army.!

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