大象传媒

My parents, like many others,married in 1940, and had to live with my mother's widowed mother in 'flat' -rooms in a tall Victorian London house. At first my father a radio fanatic, was kept in his reserved occupation, but a few months after the wedding he volunteered for the RAF, and was not called up. Shortly after, he was drafted into the Royal Corps of Signals and sent to Catterick, in time to avoid the RAF recruiters who came to look for him. He was not keen on army life, and was pleased to see my mother on a short visit and keen to start a family. His commission in July 1941 and move to 'Station 9' near London restored their finances and ensured that he remained in the UK near the family.My father began a career designing and and having made a succession of radios and electronic equipment, but did not apparently find out for two or three years that his inventions were for SOE. In his mid 20's he designed the B2,the 'suitcase radio' the most famous among others sets used by the Resistance all over Europe. I was told that he missed my arrival by some hours, kept back to finish some urgent work on radios which had to be sent out by the morning.He was billeted in Watford with two old ladies, the Misses Richardson, who made me dolls clothes from their old pre-war underwear, and gave him some beauitiful old books which we still have. My mother stayed at home after I was born but my grandmother worked as a booking clerk at the Highbury Railway station. I remember going to sit on the counter to talk to 'Auntie Tickets'(who was she?) and heard the terible tale of the porter Nell who fell on the line and was burnt. Later I shared my grandmother's huge feather bed in the back bedroom and watched her shadows at 4 or 5 in the morning as she got up for early turn.We were lucky in having a bathroom, although the green geyser behind the door which had to be lit if we wanted a bath, and tended to 'blow up' at attempts to light it, frightened me more than the threat of bombs - there were few in the area where we lived. Nevertheless, the day came when I was in the bath, and a German bomber was spotted. My great uncle, who was with us at the time, hammered on the bathroom door and I was whisked down to the ugly concrete roofed shelter in the back garden in a towel.I was my grandmother's companion going with her to my grandfather's grave in Abney Park Cemetery where we bought flowers from Queenie at the gate,and visiting my great grandparents in Dalston, or her old friend Ellen, whose country cottage in Lancashire still had no electricity, and was lit by oil lamps.
I knew nothing but life in wartime -but knew what I liked. Until she died my mother dined out on the story of my being left alone at the dining table with a precious tim of syrup -16 points out of the ration book -and taking it down with me to sit on the cross stretchers of the dining table to help myself to more with both hands. I don't remember the screams which are said to have accompanied my discovery and the subsequent removal of the tin and my only bath fully clothed. Christmas 1944 is the first I can remember, with most of the family round the table. Two cousins from Canada in the RCAF came as well as my grandmother's youngest brother, who had gone to Canada to live with his eldest sister and her husband in 1929.My father's sister, a WO2, was seeing her husband, back from Burma for the first time in nearly 4 years. He played with me, giving me rides on his back round the living room. My great aunt in Canada sent sweets, and dolls for me.I have a vague memory of my grandmother rushing me out into the road as she got ready for work one morning in the dark to see the sky full of (our) planes.VE Day with its street party ,I found bewildering. As the only child in a family of grownups, I had little experience of crowds and almost none at all of other children.After that everything changed. My father returned to the Signals and was sent abroad to Italy and Vienna My grandmother took me on holiday to Dunoon, where one day we stood on the shore and watched the Aquitania sailing home with cheering soldiers lining the rails.My father got a job and a house I think through some of his wartime contacts, and we left London and moved to Coventry, where our neighbours had children, but where I had to wait another 18 months to start school.Many of the relatives I had known in London returned to civilian life in Canada or Scotland. I don't remember being afraid during the war, except when I heard bombers and went to hide under the coats in the hall,but later, when I overheard the grownups talking about possible further conflict, i did get upset.

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