大象传媒

This story was added by Olivia Cubberley at the 大象传媒 Open Centre, Hull with the kind permission of Lilian Horsley.

I was 3 years old when the war started, living on New Bridge Road, East Hull. My mother didn't want me to be evacuated, so I stayed at home in Hull right through the war. At the age of 4 years I started Estcourt Street School. This was bombed only a few months later, so I had to attend Craven Street School. Most of our teachers were spinsters as I recall.

One afternoon we were all asked what we had had for our lunch. I casually mentioned that we had rice pudding. There seemed to be a silence. When the bell went for the end of class, our teahcer asked me to stay behind - couldn't think what I had done. She then asked me again and again where my mother had obtained the rice for the pudding, and could I please get her some!!! My father was home on leave from the Royal Navy and had brought a small pack of rice home - so there was the answer.

I remember this particular teacher was always asking "can anyone get me any bananas?". The reason being that from time to time (quite rarely), bananas were available on children's ration books, and not everybody could afford to purchase them. I'm not sure if our teacher managed to get her hands on any, but she certainly didn't from me.

We were bombed out several times during the war. I remember walking with my mother and my younger sister the full length of Holderness Road, as we were not allowed in our house. It seemed that we slept in the shelter most nights.

The last bombings I remember were around March 1945. My grandmother had taken me to the Savoy Cinema. It was a youngster's film. As soon as the Air-raid siren sounded, the news flashed across the screen. My grandmother always insisted that we sat near the back "so we could get out quickly" she used to say. We absolutely ran down Morrill Street on to New Bridge Road and to my aunt's house. We heard the bomb(s) drop a few minutes later and quite a few people were hurt or killed.

Looking back, it alwyas seems strange to me that whenever there was an Air raid, children always went to school the next day. We used to look around the classroom to see who was missing... later in the day the head teacher would come round to the class and mention somebody's name who wounldn't be coming back. Children must be tough because we just thought that was part of going to school and 'just life'.

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