大象传媒

I should start by stating that my experiences seemed perfectly normal and everyday to me because I was born in 1938. I found peace-time extraordinary and quite hard to adjust to. My time was split between my home in the suburbs and my Grandad's house in Aston. My earliest memory must have been in the early 1940's when my Father took me out of bed in my pyjamas and ran down the back garden with me until we arrived at the Anderson shelter. He held a tin hat over my head and I could hear tremendous explosions. As the bombing raids worsened, my Mother and I went to stay with relatives in Redditch, which was on hillier ground and overlooked Bitmingham. We often walked to a vantage point and I could see nothing but fire in the distance. I felt no fear as I had never been aware of a different existence. Rationing was strict but I never remember being hungry. We grew vegetables and kept chickens - everyone did. I would go with my Father to the city centre on the'bus to buy day old chicks and on the return jouney everyone would be sat with a large cardboard box on their knees each with several chicks in them, all twittering. My Father would put the box in the hearth with a light bulb in it to try to rear them. There were many more failures than successes and I would cry at the scrawny dead bodies the next day. Eggs therefore were luxury food and I only ever remember having the top off Grandad's egg until the war finished. He was over 80 and the family would discuss giving him special rations to ensure he stayed healthy and a boiled egg came into this category. Potato peelings were boiled on the kitchen stove and then mixed with fowl food to keep the stock going. I can still smell the fowl, sorry FOUL stench to this day. Any scraps from the house (if there were any) had to be deposited in the pig bin at the end of the road. It was four times the size of a dustbin and you definitely held your nose when passing it.
As I grew from a toddler to a young child, I became self appointed custodian of the blackout curtains and would walk round the house inspecting if they were tight to the window. I invariably touched it and would be promptly scolded for letting out the light. Wardens could often be heard shouting "Cover that light". There were of course no street lights so imagine my surprise, after the war ended and the gas lamps were lit outide my Grandad's house. My Mother and her sister took me for a walk along the street and I was quite panicky. To me it was like Blackpool illuminations yet in reality, it was very dim. My Aunt and Uncle lived with Grandad because they had been 'bombed out'It was talked about as a temporay arrangement but she lived there until she died in 1979. It was however a miracle that she had lived because she had taken my Uncle a plated-up dinner when he was on Fire Watch duties during a heavy night of bombing and while she was out, the house was bombed.
I started school in 1943 and the girl next door and I would walk the mile to it carrying our gas masks in little cardboard boxes. We were told to go to the nearest house on the route if the sirens started and we decided that a semi-detached en route was a film star's house because it had green roof tiles and was rendered white. We would linger at the gate longing for the siren but it never went off.
I didn't see a banana until I was six when a neighbour was given one and such was the pleasure that the skin was hung on the boards between the gardens until it went black. I had my first ice-cream, a wafer when my Grandad's youngest son arrived home on VE day after being in Malta for most of the war. He also had a jelly in his kitbag which my Aunt made and took me and it to a street party. Such was the joy when Uncle George arrived, that that night we all walked to the city centre (about three miles) to join in the celebrations outside the Town Hall in Colmore Row. I was carried shoulder high by various male relatives and bonfires burned everywhere. I thought I was in heaven.

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