大象传媒

I was born in October 1928. I remember listening to the radio and hearing that the war had started,and then the airaid sirens sounded.I was eleven years old and that was the start of all sorts of memories.On lookin back I think we just accepted that our way of life changed.
During the blackout going to the pictures was a real adventure.I went to the evening shows at the local Regal picture house about a mile away from where I lived.I was of course under age to see the "A" cert movies but this did not stop us local lads.We would wait outside and ask an adult "will you take us in please" ( can you imagine that these days?)
On leaving the Regal after seeing a "horror movie" my imagination would take over.Remember it was pitch dark. First I would start to whistle any old tune to keep me company and then the nearer I got to home the faster I walked. When at last I reached the bottom of our grove running was the order of the day!!! One time I ran into a man coming down the grove and it was the local police Sgt Walsh who was just going on duty. He wanted to know who was after me. I can't remember what I said but I wasn't going to admit I was scared. Whilst still at school I got a weekend job as an errand boy with one of the local butchers. I helped out in the shop and late Saturday afternoons I took out the orders to customers.The butcher supplied the bike which was horrendous.I could never ride it. If I sat on the saddle I could not reach the pedals.The bike had a big cane basket on the front to hold the orders and all I could do was push the thing.All went well during the light evenings but when the nights drew in I had only a very small light on the front of the bike and I quite often lost my way in the blackout.Despite the hard work and the bike, being a butchers boy did have its advantages with sraps of meat to take home,
I lived with my mother father and sister, she was 3 years older.My dad worked at the Leeds gas works in Armley.We did not see much of him as he was on shift work. 6am-2pm. 10pm-6am 2pm-6am he never had a day off just continuos change overs.My mum was a housewife and how she fed us I do not know but we never seemed to go short of food. I remember powdered egg spam and the odd bit of meat the butcher let us have on the side!! I also had a little veg patch and kept rabbits. I could never kill them, someone else did that for us.I once went to the local farmer and got some ducklings.I made a little pond for them and one day on return from school I found them all dead in the pond. They had drowned.I went back to the farmer who told me they had been incubated and therefore had not got the oil yet to keep them bouyant.He gave me some more with instructions to keep them away from water for a few weeks.Luckily this time they survived but they never did end up on the table.
Before the war we lived in the York Road area of Leeds which was deemed to be a slum area.The house was one up and one down, outside toilet and no bath.When we moved to Crossgates it was paradise.Front and back gardens and a bathroom with lots of hot water and space and at last my own bedroom.The war put an end to lots of water in the bath,5inches of water was the allowed amount.Why we kept to that who knows as it was never checked but I suppose we felt we were contributing to the war effort. Being the youngest,I had to share the water after my sister by which time the water was usually cold.
I remember the winters seemed very cold,ice would form inside the bedroom windows and you could draw patterns on it.Mum would put one of the hot oven plates,wrapped in a towel in the bed for warmth, which was ok until in the middle of the night when awoken by the air raid siren, the metal plate would be ice cold.At the beginning of the air raid warnings we got into the Anderson shelter we had built in the back garden,then as time went on we did not move from the house until we heard the anti-aircraft guns starting to fire.We lived near Barnbow munitions factory and people would say that the raiders were trying to bomb the factory.The anti aircraft guns were near Roundhay park and the noise was very loud.
Our next door neighbour Mrs Jackman would not have a shelter as she did not want to spoil her garden so she always used ours.Every time we went in she would produce a small bottle of whisky and a teaspoon and we always had to have a spoonful to calm the nerves or so she said.I hated it(How times change).
I remember a small parade of shops just opposite the local library.One was a grocersand they had this big steel clamp in the middle of the glass window both inside and outside. The idea was it would keep the glass from shattering if a bomb dropped.On display in the window were lots of empty food tins and stacks of dummy cartons. The clamp was fastened by wires to the corners of the window and we kids soon found out that by swinging on the wires the vibrations it started would cause the display to collapse.We used to walk past the next day on our way to school to look at the window.The display was alwats rebuilt.I never did find out if they knew that it was us and not the air raids that caused the display to collapse. To be contd.

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