大象传媒

I was born in March 1939 and was six months old when the war started, so do not remember my parents putting me under the table whne the air-raids started.
At that time we lived in Pyrford, Surrey and to get away from the danger my mother and I came to stay at my grand-parents house in a small village in Norfolk. My father stayed behind, as he was a plumber, an essential worker, so he did not have to go away to war. He worked on an American airbase during the war.
My first recollection as a young girl was going on the train and seeing barrage balloons in the sky on the way down from London. Also a soldier on one journey gave me a red wooden clog from Holland, which I treasured and kept for ages.
When we came to the country we lived well, as my grandfather was a gamekeeper. We ate pheasant, rabbit, pidgeon and vegetables and fruit from the garden, plus anything farmer friends cared to give us.
One who had Italian prisoners-of-war working for him, they made wicker baskets and I was given one. After the war they decided to stay on the farm and brought their wives over and became like family to the farmer and his wife, especially the children who they treated like their own grandchildren.
I also recall an American serviceman visiting my grandparents' house, who used to give me chewing gum and sweets. He later married my auntie and I was bridesmaid dressed in blue satin, the wedding reception being held in marquee in the garden.
I suppose I was like an evacuee, backwards and forwards between Norfolk and Surrey. I don't think I suffered from too much food shortages, my uncle had a smallholding in Surrey and I would eat the fruit he grew, these included gooseberries, blackcurrents and cherries. I do though remember powdered eggs, which I loved scrambled.
When I started school we sometimes had our dinners in the air raid shelter, it seemed great fun to do that. One day coming home from the corner shop in Pyrford, a man who was crouched in a concrete drain in a ditch told me to hurry home, as the siren had gone off.
I do remember our Sunday School teacher giving the children a lift in her car, which had a seat open at the back where the boot would normally be. I liked riding in that, as nobody else had a car.
I also had traditional Christmases in Norfolk, with a tree decorated with silver cones, baubles, waxed candles. Woollen dolls made by my mother and a wooden cot, desk and blackboard made by my father.
My bedroom was decorated with wallpaper with pictures of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and I had a Mickey Mouse gas mask.
After the war I came to live in Norfolk on the day the Queen got married.
Later I met my American uncle at a reunion who told me my grandfather kept a store of dried goods in his shed to provide for the people in the surrounding areas if the rations ran out.

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