大象传媒

Family Life in Oxenhope during Wartime
My father served in the war from January 1940 onwards and was away for most of the war. We lived in a small hamlet called Marsh, my grandmother, cousin, great aunt and aunt lived next door to us on one side and my aunt and uncle and two cousins lived on the other side. There were lots of older people for us to play with and talk to. My mother was a mender during the war and she worked in the woolen industry, and so of course she had only worked part time while I was young, but once the war began she had to go full time, so I was taken care of by my grandmother and my aunts. My uncle next door, he was a member of the Home Guard in Oxenhope and twice a week he used to go with his broom handle and his tin hat and practice the Home Guard methods in a school down in Oxenhope. When I was old enough I went to Haworth nursery so that my mother could work more regular hours and there was an outbreak of chicken pox and everybody sent their children to school with chicken pox, and my mother was so disgusted that she took me away from there.

An Evacuee
We had an evacuee came from Bradford and my brother at that time was about three and he had very blonde hair and my mother was simply horrified when she found a small louse running in his very blonde hair that had come from the evacuee and she said she couldn鈥檛 do with this evacuee any longer.

Rationing
I remember as a child the rationing, although we lived in the country it still applied to us. My father had been the manager of the co-op in Haworth and people thought we were getting priority goods but it wasn鈥檛 so and I do remember very clearly sharing an egg with my brother, he always got the bit with the runny on and I didn鈥檛 because I was the eldest, so I had to make do with the bit that wasn鈥檛 runny. I also remember that my grandmother used to listen to a man on the radio called Freddie Grisewood and this man used to give make-do-and-mend recipes for people to make and my grandmother listened very intently and she used to make Freddie Grisewood buscuits, which were kind of pinwheel shaped and we used to eat those and we really enjoyed them. At that time, everybody even with the smallest, smallest little garden grew vegetables and granny and Aunt May used to grow vegetables and everybody made things themselves. I remember going on the bus and reading the notices on the bus and they said things like Careless Talk Costs Lives and I think I learnt to read on careless talk and Make-do-and-Mend.

A Small Token from Germany
I remember that after my father had been in the war for quite a while he came home on leave. He had been to Germany and he came home on leave because he was in the field bakery, so he was at the front line always because they were feeding the troops, and he brought home a German flag that he had captured. It was a great big red flag with a swastika in the middle and my grandmother very carefully unpicked the swastika and made the red material into a new blouse for me, which I wore with great pride, not realising exactly what a swastika was about.

The focal point of village life
I also remember that a lot of things we did during the war were centered round the chapel and we used to go to the chapel for all kinds of different things. I don鈥檛 know where people got things from, but my mother somehow got a parachute, which she chopped up and made into costumes for all the children if they were in a play or anything like that.

Sweets
The worst restriction was sweeties, we couldn鈥檛 have sweeties, but I think it has been very good for me in later life because I still have my own teeth despite the fact I鈥檓 an old lady. We couldn鈥檛 have sweets but my mother used to buy all the points worth of sweets on Monday and then she used to bring them home and we each had a little box and we could have three sweets a day from our box. I was always very envious of the children at school who could have their points and go to the shops and I remember towards the end of the war they got gob stoppers in the little local shop and you had to have one and a half points, sorry half a point for a gob stopper and I was desperate for half a point to have a gob stopper and my mother thought it was very impolite so she wouldn鈥檛 let me have one.

School Life
My brother and I were both at Oxenhope Church of England Primary School, which was a school that went from when the children started at four and stayed until they were fourteen. It was about a mile and a half to walk to school but it didn鈥檛 really matter because we always managed to do it. We had these older cousins that used to take us to school. When we got to school I remember going in the cellar and having gas mask drill and we all had to go with these little square wooden boxes with gas masks inside and after so long, after you had had the chance to put your gas mask on, they turned the lights out to simulate and air raid and I was quite frightened of that, I didn鈥檛 like it at all. But during my primary years we were taken as little children to the Alhambra at Bradford to see Norman Evans in Over the Garden Wall and I remember going to see that and it was really something to go to Bradford from Oxenhope, they had a coach and took us through to Bradford. As little infants we were made to go to bed in the afternoon, we stayed up in the morning and then we had to go to bed in the afternoon, and we had a little pile of metal beds with canvas slips across and we got to sleep in those and the teacher used to say 鈥測ou will sleep!鈥� I think at school we had a lot of teachers who were really not qualified or who had been pupil teachers when they first started. We didn鈥檛 have as good an education maybe as we might have had, a lot of it seemed to be bitty, and when we did needlework we had horrible purple sort of oatmeal cotton knitting fabric and we were taught to knit gloves for sailors and we also had to collect for national savings. We used to take six pence a week for national savings and the school had a kind of merit board and every time we took an extra pound for national savings they pushed up the merit board, so that was your contribution to the war.

The Radio
We also had the radio during the war and the radio was really very important to us and I remember listening to the weather forecast going on about different islands I鈥檇 never heard of, like German Bight, the Hebrides and all the Atlantic islands during the war. I remember the music that we had and I know that my cousins who were older than me they used to paint their legs with gravy browning and they used to draw a seam up the back with eyebrow pencil and I remember Bing Crosby brought out Swinging On A Star at that time and I remember having a wind up gramophone which we had borrowed to play this 78 record and my cousin used to wind it up madly and then play it and it was her very favourite, favourite record and one day she left it on the chair and accidentally I sat on it.

A Nightmare
I can remember the air raid wardens coming round whilst I was in bed. There were also a lot of dispatch riders that drove through the village on their motorbikes, and my one nightmare and I used to have this nightmare regularly, it used to send me quite frightful. I was in bed and a dispatch rider came to get me to take to Hitler, because I was quite sure that Hitler was going to get me. And I remember in my dream, jumping down the steps from the top to the bottom because I was so petrified of being taken to Hitler on a dispatch riders motorbike.

Night Time Raids
I can remember that there was bombing across in Bradford and you could see in an evening some times where the bombs came down, you could see the fires and the smoke because Oxenhope isn鈥檛 that far from Bradford and you can see it.

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