大象传媒

I was born at the very beginning of 1940 just as the war started and my father, BUck Taylor, was captured at Dunkirk in 1940 and therefore,
I never met him until I was 5 years old - which was a great shock!

My mother decided to evacuate me when I was just three years old. I left London with my cousin who was just six years older than me and arrived at Preston where a lady we had never seen before met us at the Station. She was an
acqaintance of my Father's. We came to know her as Auntie Annie. Our time in Preston was interesting to say the least. Auntie Annie was very poor and any little 'luxuries' was had to work for. The house was situated opposite a Cotton Mill and each day they would tip the coke from the plant onto a piece of waste ground overlooking a canal. We would be sent up the hill to the waste ground (about 100 yards) with Buckets to collect the coke for her to burn for a fire for which we would be rewarded a sweet at the end of the week.

Unfortunately, Auntie ANnie's husband Henry was a violent man and regularly beat his wife if the dinner wasn't to his liking. We had to share a tin bath in front of the fire each night and one night when fish and chips were on the menu, to which he took a complete dislike, he threw the plate of fish and chips at the opposite wall and the chips fell into the bath with my cousin and me. We endured this sort of behaveour for just over two years, although he was kindness itself to both of us children.

At the beginning of one day, Aunt ANnie told me to go outside to the front of the house, which went straight onto the pavement - Coronation Street type - where my mum, Rose stood hand in hand with a man I had never seen before and my mum was beaming as I had never seen before. It was the end of the war which had been my life for 5 years.

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