大象传媒

Life in Harlech during WW2 was not as hard as in other areas. Many of our young men were called up for active service which did mean that, as in all other parts of the UK,families and loved ones were left behind in a state af anxiety,with only the occasional radio broadcast to give some indication of the state of the war.
Being a somewhat "safe area", young children were evacuated from less safe areas to Harlech. This meant that families who accepted vacuees worked very hard to make the children feel happy.
My grandmother had decided that as a family, we would introduce our two evacuees, Dorothy and Alan, to the beach. Then, every day was summer; the sun did shine every day. Next morning, we were all very excited and ran down stairs ready for our breakfast of bread with a thin scraping of farm butter(ugh!) and my gran's home made marmalade along with a glass of cold milk. After breakfast, Gran called Dorothy and myself into the front parlour. There
were two lovely sundresses, one for each of us. I recognised the material - they were made from my bedroom curtains which had been replaced by blackout blinds. Gran had stayed up for hours the night before to make these two sundresses, and they fitted perfectly.
Alan and my cousin Pip had to contend with their short trousers - no new clothes for them!
We set off for the beach. Not one of the four of us possessed a swimming costume - knickers and pants were the order of the day, so on arrival at the beach, we stripped off and ran into the sea. We had such fun and all too soon, gran called us to come for lunch. We all tucked into our bread and home-made blakckcurrant jam sandwiches (with margarine this time, not butter) all wrapped up in the waxed paper from the inside of a cornflakes, washed down with a drink of water which had been kept cool by partially burying the bottle in the sand.
Back into the sea for a full afternoon of fun,until Gran called us back for a small rock cake and a further drink of what had now become warm water. After another dip in the sea, Gran called announced that it was time to go home - the sun was over Cricceth, which meant that in was about six o'clock in the evening. Time had gone all too soon and we had all enjoyed ourselves so much. The climb up the steep hill home didn't seen so steep as we were all so happy.
Our days on the beach became the norm for us, and soon we were confident enough to go to the beach ourselves without Gran.
Our new friends, Dorothy and Alan still talked about their home and family in Liverpool, but were also very happy, spending an extended holiday with their new family in Harlech.

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