大象传媒

Patrick John Harper interviewed by Matt Harvey 15/4/2005
Transcription by John David of a Video recording of the interview.

Anyway, after that, after a while I got fed up, and I decided to run away from the people I was living with. I had to do all little jobs like get firewood, from the pit, little logs, and I used chop them up inside her air-raid shelter, and I used to sell the firewood around the houses to make a little bit of pocket-money, see. That鈥檚 the only way I could get anything to buy sweets or anthing, eh, you know, after all. Then I decided to run away, so I went off into another town somewhere, and the police come up to me and wanted to know where I was from, I said I had run away from Clipstone, and I tell them all about it, they said 鈥淲ell, you don鈥檛 have to go back there, would I go in a remand home?鈥� You know what a Remand home is, eh? That鈥檚 for the young boys, not for the older ones. 鈥淎s long as you do as you鈥檙e told, you won鈥檛 get no trouble, they鈥檙e well behaved.鈥� And true enough, when I got there, it was like an open prison, no walls, you know. Before I was there no time at all, they were working out a breakout, and I was going to go with them! You know what you are when you鈥檙e kids, eh?
But what happened, when my brother joined the air force, he joined the air force, he went to Iraq, he went out east, like, you know, and when he come back, he looked up Mansfield, he went to Clipstone, where he was living, you see, and he was walking down the High Street, and who was coming up towards him is the landlord that I lived with, Frank, he saw him, he went like that, and straight away the guilt in his face, he thought it was me coming towards him, eh, because he didn鈥檛 know my brother Brian, you see, and he said he scarpered as quick as he could. That鈥檚 because he wouldn鈥檛 touch him, but the laughed and laughed.
Luckily for me, the old man, my father, turned up. To take me home, take me away. We went back to Waterloo station, met up with my brothers and sister, no we didn鈥檛, we met up in a farm somewhere in the country, my auntie was there, I believe, and my brother was working on the farm. He was driving a horse on the farm, ploughing, and all that sort of thing, we all met up together there, the four of us, and we went back to Waterloo Station and across the boat back to England and the last word I heard form my second mother was 鈥渨e鈥檙e liberated at last鈥� From England, not from Guernsey 鈥� I think that鈥檚 about it, eh?

Pat Harper

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