大象传媒

We were living in Stockwell S.W London.My parents,one set of grandparents,my aunt and two lodgers.The house was large and was,I think, once a vicarage. Because of the number of us in the house we had two Anderson Shelters in the garden.I remember them arriving, shiny corrugated steel and my father and grandfather digging a pit, concreting the base and errecting the shelters.They stood like two miniature Nissen huts,growing from the ground.
My father banked them up with earth and he and my grandfather grew marrows on the top and nastursiums.Inside was made comfortable with
slatted bunks and an oil lamp and an oil stove.

It was quiet for weeks.....for months, after war had been declared and we got blase'about leaving our beds and "going down the shelter"
Then, one night, after a few days of planes flying low and nights being lit up by flares, the London docks were bombed.Intelligence ran down the street "theyv've got the docks!","hundreds of fire engines" "Youcan see the glow from here".

We went "down the shelter" fortified with flasks of tea and jam sandwiches listening to the thuds and bangs and noises like firework rockets getting closer. The house was hit, a direct hit. Air raid wardens later described the bomb as coming straight for the garden but a fin caught the coping of the house and the bomb somersaulted back ontoi the roof and into the house,exploding with fire.The blast ran through the garden and I remember only smell of eath and my grandmother telling me to lie quite still and not to open my eyes until she'd brushed them off "It's my best silk hanky" she said. It's funny the things one remembers!. Apparently we'd been buried for about 20minutes and shock was the only damage. Some how we went to a "Reception Centre" where I was given a banana and then on to my other grandmother in Norwood, We were all settled in makeshift beds when, Crash! a landmine at the end of the road brought plaster off the ceilings and cracked the
blue glass,heart shaped,mirror of the dressing table from side to side.

Two days later my Father,Grand father and ny grandmother returned "home" to inspect the damage.Nothing remained except rubble and broken furniture.A recently acquired kitten was found safe,curled up under a large teddy bear that was up ended in the wreckage.

It was the line of her wahing the contents of which were now dressing the trees in the street that was the bitterest blow to my grandmother.Hitler might blow her house to bits ,damage the well being of her family,this she could cope with. But, her and my grandfather's intimate belongings on public display was too much.She didn't speak for about a fortnight and I can remember realising,young as I was, that she had sudenly become an old lady.

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