大象传媒

Jock also fitted in with ourfamily.His mom used to write to my mom.She was so pleased that Jock was being looked after properly.
Dick was killed in an accident whilst riding his khaki motorbike.It was awful.The first time death ahd come anywhere near me.
My mum and dad and I went up to Kettering to meet Dick's family.I don't think it was for the funeral because I can't remember one.Dick's brother was very kind to me and I found myself telling him all about my books,especially my film annuals.He had some too.They dated back to the early 1930's, and he gave them to me.I have them to this day.
During our evenings round the fire in the 'room'.we were amused by another soldier we had billetted on us.
I can't remember his name but he spoke fluent german.He used to do imitations of Hitler giving one of his frenzied speeches to the masses,He looked a bit like Herbert
Lom,the film star of that time,and he was really good fun and kept us laughing a lot.You really needed people like that during the war years.
We must have had a bedroom free while he was staying with us ,or perhaps my mother made us double up again, because his mother came to live with us for a while.
I remember she was quite a large lady ,and, wonder of wonders she had a false leg!Gosh,it did fasinate me.It had a joint at the knee that locked or unlocked for sitting and standing.
One day we were all sitting round the table in the 'room' and a new leg was delivered to the front door.That leg was passed round the table from perosn to person and was very well inspected.It also caused considerable merriment.It was a pale pinky-beige colour, and could have been made of bakelite.It had a sort of harness,made I think, of a light webbing,with which it would have been strapped to the waist,once the stump was inserted in the top of the leg.
We had all nationalities in Leamington Spa.As well as Czech,Begian and Polish soldiers, we had Americans.Everyone called them Yanks.Girls went for them -in a big way.Their uniforms were tailored in a much nicer material than our soldiers'battledress.They had more money,and their accents were straight out of the 'movies',as they called them.Disgruntled people used to say they were overpaid ,oversexed and over here.My mum and dad didn't approve of them at all and the girls who went with them were no better than they should be.Lots of girls marired them though and went to live in
America.
My friend Pam, who came to live in the street, had an aunt who married a Czech and wnet to live in Czechoslovakia after the war.
Not such a good choice I shouldn't think.the way things turned out.
We also had german prisoners of war in Leamington Spa.They wore brown uniforms with big round patches on their backs.I used to see lorry loads of them on their way to work on farms with just a driver and a soldier to guard them.Some of them married Engilsh girls and settled here after the war,
We had one other evacuee beside the soldiers mother.She was a girl form London.She came to Leamington Spa with her mother but the mother had to stay elsewhere as we were a bit full at the time,and I had to share with this girl,whose name I can't remeber.I apologise for all these names I can't remember but it was over fifty years ago!I'll tell you one thing though.My friend Christine had an evacuee at her house , and his name was George Gascoigne!W e both thought it a funny name ,and that one has definitely stuck in my memory.
Anyway,the girl staying with us was in her teens and very intersted in boys.My mother was frightened to detah she would 'get into trouble'while she was living under our roof.
That was one of the main things mothers used to worry about during the war,keeping their daughters out of trouble.Nice girls didn't do it,or if you did you kept quiet about it and hoped you wouldn't get caught out- in more ways than one.
You'd be surprised what little gems of knowledge young ears picked up when grown ups were talking.Pam and Valerie and I used to wonder.how bables wre born.How did they get out?Out through the belly button was the best we could come up with at the time.
Children were so innocent in those days.This girl from London turned out to be another destined to work at Lockheed.She fancied a feller she worked with there and I could see she had to smarten herself up if she wanted a chance of hooking him.
Young as I was ,I could see she didn't make the best of herself.Let's face it.I studied all these glamorous fim stars at the pictures every Thursday night, and I didn't miss much.
I got her to have her hair cut decently and pinned her front roll for her.Her clothes improved after my mother had dealt with them for a week or two, and we both worked on her make-up.She got her man in the end.
We also has another recruit to the street gang.Next door had evacuees,and one of them was John Wadham form Deal in Kent.He was a blonde,gentle natured boy about my age and he joined in our jaunts over the fields,
and played in the street with us.The neighbours were Mr and Mrs Scott,she was known as Scotty.They had a black mogrel dog that hated all other dogs.One day he was going beserk in their basement area over another dog that was trying to get at him from the pavement above.My mother couldn't stand thenoise any longer and threw a bucketful of water over him.Unfortunately Scotty was just coming out of her door to sort them out and the water went all over her. I was dying to laugh but I didn't dare.The look my mother gave me was enough,my very repesctable mother couldn't bear to think that she had done something as awful as half drowning a neighbour.
Scotty was a very good natured woman,not one to hold a grudge, and it all blew over.The episode was never mentioned again in our house.

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