大象传媒

Dancing was the joy of my life! I learned tap dancing from the age of 5 and my grandmother provided me with a stock of old net curtains with which I used to bedeck myself when dancing on our chicken shed.

My father kept chickens to help with the egg situation. My memory is that rationing gave us one egg per person per week, so my father, by keeping chickens, was able to provide us with enough eggs to keep my mother happy, and could sell a few fresh eggs to neighbours. They livd in a shed at the bottom of our garden, and were a constant source of annoyance to neighbours, as the cock crowed at unearthly hours. Sleep in the mornings was very precious in those days, because we had been kept up most of the night by the air raids. Also, the chickens would frequently escape, and wander into neighbouring gardens, trampling and leaving their mark on carefully tended vegetables.

However, in the main everyone was tolerant, because they did provide extra eggs for everyone.

Often a neighbour would put on the radio loudly and call out to me 'come on Margaret - give us a tapdance'. I would then climb onto the shed, decked out in the net curtains, and dance while the women in houses backing on to our garden in their turbans and dinky curlers would cher me on.

'One day you'll go through that shed, and your father will give you such a hiding' my grandmother would call from the kitchen window. Of course, I knew this would not happen, and continued to entertain neighbours when they asked.

Needless to say, the inevitable did happen one day, when I went right through the centre of the shed, amidst a particularly rampant tapping of the feet. I sailed through the shed; the chickens squawked in fright, and flapped thir wings in horror at this white apparition cavorting through their home. I landed with a thud on the deck, amid squelching, stinking droppings, and rising to my fet, slunk out into the garden. My grandmother smirked, and said 'I told you so!'

Of course my father was very displeased with me, particularly as the chickens took a long time to recover, and nobody had any eggs for a period of time.

However, nothing deterred me, as I continued to use the shed as my stage, and just danced round the hole!

About this time, at school, we were asked to bring in our gasmasks. A teacher would sit at the piano and play children's dancing tunes, and when she stopped, we had to put on our Mickey Mouse gasmasks. The last one would be out, and so on until we had a winner - the fastest putter on of gasmasks.

Our class gradually dwindled fom 44 to a very small number, as children went off to be evacuated. We would stand in a queue at morning playtime, and the teacher, Miss Shepherd, would stand with a large bottle of Cod Liver Oil. This was a compulsory exercise. Number one would open his or her mouth, and a spoonful would be popped in. Number two would follow suit, until at last number 44 had swallopwed the vile substance. Number 44 probably felt more sick than the rest of us, as 43 mouths had been round that spoon before him or her. Most of us were riddled with head lice, cold sores, runny noses, and other varying forms of nastiness, because we had no water, certainly no hot water, and had probably spent the night in some air raid shelter, lying in blankets full of bugs and in the damp and cold. You can imagine, we all fought to be at the front of the queue.

All the teachers were 'Miss' at that time, because they were not allowed to marry and retain their job. The same applied to nurses, unless of course a woman was widowed, and then there would be the occasional 'Mrs' amongst the staff. The teachers were very frightening my recollection is of long dark dresses, and hair in a bun, often plaited headphones on each ear, and very hard hands which used to hit bare legs often.

However, we could play in the street with freedom - very few cars on the road, and little to frighten us.

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