大象传媒

On reaching the age of 12, you could have ten days off from school for jobs on the land, my time off was for potato picking. It was hard work but you accepted it as a way of life.

As the war went on and our troops had landed in France, our schoolmates used to bring his newspaper in class and read articles out of it on how the war was progressing. The one day I remember even now he took us al into the playground to look at all these planes pulling gliders. I think the planes were Dakotas, some were even pulling2 gliders. There must have been hundreds of them. This could have been about the time the troops parachuted into Arnhem.

When I was 13years old I got my first cycle, not a new one, but that didn鈥檛 matter, it was something I had wanted for years. I could now go into the town and the cinema. If the film had a U certificate you were alright, but if it had the dreaded A certificate, you had to be accompanied by an adult.

Today we say don鈥檛 talk to strangers, but if I saw a grown up going into the cinema you would ask them if they would take you in. It nearly always worked, once inside you went our own way.

When I became 14 years old this meant leaving school at the end of term about March I think. The war was still raging. I started work on the land and have done so all my life, sometimes hard but nothing like the days of my father and grandfathers. So in my father鈥檚 words we have come through some golden times.

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