大象传媒

I was 12 when war broke out, and I didn't want to be evacuated and leave all my friends and family behind. I had the choice, because I was older, so I decided to stay.

Schools ran part-time because of the bombing, and I had the chance to work part-time for a dress makers - general assistance, running errands and so on. Travelling was difficult as the roads were full of holes and badly damaged, so most errands were on foot.

Every night, our routine was the same. Gather clothes for tomorrow, then off to our air-raid shelter. I remember going to the loo once, and seeing a German bomber caught in our searchlights and thinking it wouldn't be long before it shut down. A favourite pastime for us children were looking for shrapnel souvenirs early in the morning.

Mum becaume ill, and had to stay in hospital, and as she was in the country it meant I could not visit her - hospitals were located away from the cities to minimise the chances of being bombed, and like most people those days, Dad didn't have a car - you were quite "important" if you had a car!

One night, around the beginning of 1941, a one thousand pound bomb fell on the crossroads where we lived - our house was the third in the row. I remember the shaking and the vibration, and the sound of the explosion, the loudest noise you could ever imagine. I have tried to describe it to people over the years, but I have never found anything you could compare it to.
My family were in the air-raid shelter as normal, and although we were all safe and sound our house bore the brunt of the bomb and was ruled unsafe to live in.

Earlier that evening, we had been offered the chance to shelter in the local Underground station just a few streets away along with a number of other local families, but my father had decided that we would use our shelter as normal. We found out later that at the same time as our crossroads was bombed, another bomb had fallen directly on the tube station. This bomb had caused so much devastation that the authorities simply sealed off both ends of the station, and the families who had sought shelter there were never heard of again.

Following this event, Dad decided "enough was enough"! We had relatives in Blackburn Lancashire, and so our cousin came down to London to drive us up to stay with them.
Blackburn was so peaceful compared to Maida Vale that at first, I found it difficult to get off to sleep! Everything was strange and different, from the houses and buildings to the way people spoke and their accents, and it's fair to say that I didn't much care for the town at first; indeed, I decided that as soon as I was old enough I would move back to London.

A couple of days after we arrived in Blackburn, Mum passed away; and the following year I lost my father as well. By then, I was working at a wool shop part-time, and as the owners had no children of their own they offered to adopt me. I was delighted, and over the next couple of years things began to get better and better for me. I met a wonderful Blackburn lad, and we married and settled down properly in the town, and now I wouldn't want to live anywhere else!!

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