大象传媒

Mrs Prandi was born in 1933 in London, when she was two months old the family moved to Leon Solent on the south coast. She had a brother who was older and a sister whom was 9 years younger than her. She started school in Leon Solent and she can't really remember too much but has been informed that they used to watch the liners going by on the sea. She said she was too young to really remember much else.

In 1939 the family relocated again to Romsey, her father got a job with Strong company who were the local brewers. This was when the war started. Mrs Prandi can only remember one or two things during the war as she states she was only 6 at the time.

On one occasion she can remember going outside with her family and looking up at the sky, which was filled with a red glow, she remembers thinking how pretty it looked, but of course it wasn鈥檛 a pretty site as it was Southampton burning. She can remember being cold and vaguely thinks it was a severely cold winter. The family didn't have any coal for the fire so they went to bed when it got dark. And also she can remember going out with her mother and they were gathering pinecones to put on the fire to burn.

They lived at 1 Love lane, which she quotes as sounding very romantic, but they had the gasometer at one end of love lane and the other twower at the other end. It was a detached house with pebbledash, she has recently been back to the house and its still there and she feels that Love lane has gone almost more upmarket these days. Two doors away from them used to live the cobbler and as a small curious child she when in to watch him work, preparing all the shoes occasionally, they were the families friends. Mr and Mrs Smith.

鈥淔or some reason鈥� states Mrs Prandi, 鈥淓ven though we were not catholic I went to a convent school鈥� which was in Romsey. The convent was a boarding school also and Mrs Prandi still to this day thinks that her parents placed them there just in case they had to move about, and instead of moving her and her brother, her little sister was born later, could board if necessary, but they were still at that point classed as day pupils.

Another encounter Mrs Prandi can remember very clearly was walking down the road with her mother one day and again looking up at the sky after hearing a noise and seeing planes fighting overhead, they had to jump in the ditch to take cover as they didn鈥檛 know what wa going to happen next, she believes that was the Battle of Britain, that was in 1940.

She will never quite understand why but after seeing Southampton burning,
But when her father got offered to be the Manager at the Hampton Park Hotel in swaythling in Southampton. He agreed. So in the Blitz the family relocated again to Southampton. Her mother was pregnant by this time, and heavily so. Mrs Prandi says she can remember being very frightened, because every night there seemed to be air raids, she can remember her mother coming round with a gentle shake for each of us to wake us up, she says she felt at times like all she wanted to do was turn over and fall asleep again. They didn鈥檛 have an Anderson shelter in the garden they had a Morrison shelter within the house, which had been reinforced with wooden poles going up. It was like a table, she said you would get in it and then her father would pull the last bit of the grill down. Her sister was born in November 1942, so that was five people plus the dog and the takings from the pub into croft bags in those days. She can remember hearing the bombs whistling down, her mother always said that if we get a direct hit we would not hear it whistling, but to this day she still doesn鈥檛 know if that鈥檚 true or not. When asked if the use of the Morrison shelter was daily she replied 鈥� well it seemed like it for quite a while鈥�. She also stated that it was used mostly at night than in the day, but could鈥檝e taken place at any time. But because the family lived outside of Southampton rather than in it, she knows it wasn鈥檛 as bad as it would have been living in the centre.

She told how one day her dad came home from work with a big slab of marble, which had come from the ruins of a bank in Southampton, she told how there was a penny which had been hit with such force that it had been wedged into the marble itself.

Her mother would work behind the bar to help her father, she saw to the staff that worked there. Another interesting comment Mrs Prandi mentioned was that before the War started her parents were very strict and would always have the cane nearby, for punishment when there was a lack of manners, and she tells how when the War broke it seemed that these rules turned upside down. She quotes 鈥� we had much more freedom鈥�. In those days she told us that horror films were allowed to be viewed by children with adult supervision and so she had to clarify this with her brother. What they would do was to stand and ask people if they could go in with them.

Her brother passed his eleven plus to go to Taunton grammar school in Southampton, but unfortunately Taunton School was evacuated to Bournemouth and so he was evacuated and he lived in West way. When her younger sister was born, her brother came back to see the new arrival. But he did make regular visits, when he was able.

She tells also of the days when she had to try the gas masks on incase there was ever need to use them, she said she thought her sisters was the funniest, she looked so funny a little baby with a mickey mouse mask on. She luckily never had to use it but the memory of the thought of one day having to has stuck in her mind. She even remembers the box the mask came in and the button you had to use.

Due to moving to a few different schools she feels that there are a few gaps in her education that are missing. She was a shy child and never felt like she had made any friends, but she puts it down to moving about so much at a young age.

After this her father got the chance to work in a pub in Bournemouth the family jumped at the chance as they felt Bournemouth was a tranquil place which hadn鈥檛 been touched, and also her brother was there. It was the Railway hotel, which is on the corner of St Paul鈥檚 road and Holdenhurst road, which is presently near the Asda Roundabout. And apparently before her father was managing it Tony Hancock鈥檚 father was the Manager of the pub. Nowadays it has been turned into big office blocks, so no longer exists, but there seems to be lots of memories.

She remembers in the May of 1943 sitting at the kitchen table having a cup of cocoa and suddenly heard planes and firing and then huge explosions. Quickly she dived under the table and her mother was in the scullery, her sister was asleep in the front room and her brother was in his bedroom and then she heard glass smashing, obviously the windows had broken and then she remembered they went downstairs into the pub. Her mother was crying and she states that she had never seen her cry before, then they heard that the Metropole hotel which was at the Lansdowne had, had a direct hit, there had been a lot of young Canadian airmen in it, so there were lots of deaths.

The next thing she told us was that they had come in to tell the family that they had to be evacuated as there was an unexploded bomb in the back garden, so they had to go down to Horseshoe common, where there were quite a lot of people. They were evacuated to a bed and breakfast in Holden Hurst road. The raid was on a Sunday, the family had to stay in the bed and breakfast for three to four days and then they excavated this crater which was in their back garden by then and found that a bomb had actually bounced in the garden and they found some of the tailfin, it has bounced into Sherry and Haycock. She feels that if the bomb hadn鈥檛 of bounced and in fact had gone off she wouldn鈥檛 be sat here today telling her story.

She can remember when they were being evacuated, going passed Beales in the Town centre at ten years old she felt astonished to see all the devastation and rubble. Mrs Prandi tells how the building next to Beales had a pipe that had broken, it was dripping water, she tells how the one thing going through her mind was, and well that鈥檚 not going to be of any use to help put all of the fires out.

After three or four days the family were allowed back to their house and pub, which by this time had all been repaired and put back into place. There was one person in Mrs Prandi鈥檚 family to die and that was her uncle Arthur, whom worked in the bomb disposal squad.

She tells us that as a child it was extremely hard, because there were no sweets and ice creams. The eggs were dried and came in tins, which were used to make omelettes and she told us that they were horrible. But she was very grateful that her mother was a good cook and seemed to be able to make the most of the limited food and make it taste reasonably nice. And by the sounds of it the meals they had were very varied on a day-to-day basis, her mother tried to have a very balanced meal everyday to.

Her favourite pudding was a mixture of fresh suet, which had come from the butchers, sugar and anything else that her mother could find to make it slightly different, Mrs Prandi told us that they called this stodge pudding. She would do the shopping for her mother, and each time the rationed foods were always on the top of the list and then once this had been bought it was a case of taking whatever they had left.

Whenever there were any bananas or oranges in the shop, the word would soon spread and then she said it seemed like everyone would dash to the shops to get some. Luckily though the family didn鈥檛 always have tinned eggs as they had some live chickens in the back garden, which would have fresh eggs, because it was such a rarity to have fresh eggs her mother would always make sure she checked underneath each chicken to see if they had any eggs stored underneath.

The clothes were rationed to and Mrs Prandi tells how whenever they grew out of any clothes they would walk down to the town hall in Bournemouth. She said there was a point system, in which you would receive a certain amount of points for them and then you would use those points to get something a bit larger. She states she had some pretty odd clothes.

Mrs Prandi told that in the stream that runs through Bournemouth gardens where the Balloon is now. There was a dam built, the high walls meant that it was the perfect depth for all the children to go and swim in. Mrs Prandi states that this was where she learnt to swim with her rubber ring. Unfortunately the only downside was that due to the unhygienic water that was being used by lots of children, she caught some terrible boils.

One day she came across some men digging holes in the road just near the railway hotel, it turned out that they were German prisoners, and she can recall feeling so frightened to walk passed.

Living in a pub and being so young, they didn鈥檛 find it hard to play, they weren鈥檛 allowed to go into the bars, but they would go and play shove halfpenny. Her brother would make tanks out of wooden cotton reels, and elastic bands and she would make furniture out of matchboxes. They would play with cards and dominoes. She had one doll, called Elizabeth Jayne, whom she states she will never forget. Even though it was forbidden Mrs Prandi and her brother would sometimes be allowed to go into the bar and play darts.

Mrs Prandi says that the one thing that she will have as a consequence of the war is that she jumps extremely easy when she hears a loud noise. She also states that she is very frightened of thunders storms, which is very understandable. Mrs Prandi never throws anything away. And always has candles and matches just in case. This is all due to living through the War.

Most things were easy to get to for the family, simply by walking. They still played ball in the park, the only problem was that the beach was out of bounds and she tells how she remembers one day looking down at the beach and not seeing a mark in the sand, just seeing how smooth it was, because no one was able to walk along it like they are nowadays. She can though remember the first time she went down to the beach, it was a dark night and she remembers being frightened of the waves. And for years afterwards where they had, had this system, to stop landing crafts, there were still parts in the water, it was like scaffolding frame.

Mrs Prandi tells us how she thought that after the war everything would immediately go back to normal. She can remember some American coming in to the bar and her father would ask if he could have some chewing gum for them, as the sweets were still very bland and the same things all the time.

Mrs Prandi went to St Paul鈥檚 school in Bournemouth it since then has been demolished and has been replaced by Asda, she went here at 9 years and old and states that 鈥� This is where Mrs Nasebit would terrorise us鈥�, this was a teacher. She visited the library everyday, until it closed.

Mrs Prandi now goes on to tell us about what her family did on VE Day. They went down to the Pavilion Theatre, where the fountain had been turned on, it had not been working throughout the war. The huge raise of water with coloured lights going through is a very clear memory for Mrs Prandi. She also tells us that each time the bigger jet raised to the sky the crowd would cheer.
They stood and celebrated the end of the war with so many. They decorated the pub with flags and just really enjoyed themselves as a family.

Mrs Prandi said they lived life very normally throughout the war and she feels that if they had of changed their lifestyle through being frightened and scared, then life would not have been worth living.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.