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During the Blitz, my mum, Freda Olive Gammon, was sitting, reading a newspaper, during her lunch break, at her fathers grocer’s shop in East Finchley, when she heard a sort of ‘whooshing’ sound. Instinctively, she dived under the kitchen table and there was an almighty bang, as a parachute mine exploded across the road.

The windows smashed and a large piece of glass became imbedded in the chair, in which she’d just been sitting. She struggled through the dust and broken glass to the front of the shop to see if her father was OK. He’d been standing talking to a customer and had been sheltered by a wall next to the shop front window, but the customer had been blown across the floor of the shop, covered in glass, but not seriously injured.

However, across the road, a whole block of house and shops had been turned to rubble and about forty people just ‘disappeared’. For many years after, the area was known as the ‘bomb site’ and only recently has a new block of flats been erected there.

Mum had some cuts to her face and several days later these became infected by the brick and plaster dust and she was in agony with the inflamed spots and she remembers running round the living room, trying to get away from the pain.

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