大象传媒

As a young boy during the last war, I was playing outside the Odeon cinema. Suddenly the unmistakeable rasping staccato sound of a German flying bomb was heard. It appeared high up in the sky with it's tail glowing red from it's fiery rocket motor. Then the engine stopped, followed by an erie silence broken only by the noise of it's steep dive. People were throwing themselves flat upon the pavement, others in the adjacent shelter doorway were screaming at me to join them.
Amazingly, the rocket motor burst back into life and the doodle-bug levelled out just above chimney pot height and headed for my house. I was rooted to the spot, but fortunately it carried on and exploded in a field. At one and the same time I ran for the shelter and made it on a blast of air without my feet touching the ground. Several people broke my fall but nobody was hurt.
The prospect of so much shrapnel ( a wonderful currency at school) made me determined to get to the crater first. Taking a shortcut I suddenly found my little legs getting nowhere due to the fact that a neighbour had hoisted me up by the scruff of my neck and carried me from her house to mine, informing me that my Mother was worried sick as to my whereabouts. I did a quick pleading to her and I was off again. What a disappointment! The flying bomb had it's nose buried in the ground, tail sticking up in the air, smoking but intact. The charge had blasted out of the end having given me a free ride minutes earlier.
Of course this episode came to an abrupt end when the police arrived climbing over the field fence and told me to sling my hook

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