大象传媒

I did get half a peanut- all I was given and all there was. It was wonderful, I have loved them ever since, but none have ever tasted as good.
The Japanese never landed but my cousin Ian thought they had.
Sometime, presumably in 1944, a number of ammunition dumps in nearby Doune - six, I think - blew up, woke Bridge of Allan and shattered many of its windows. I slept through it (and the Bridge of Allan earthquake), but my cousin Ian on a brief visit from Glasgow, being older, wiser and more knowledgable, ran round the house next morning convinced the Japanese had landed.
I recall being not much impressed by the drama, didn't know what a Japanese was and being disappointed at not being allowed to go and see the broken windows.
Being three years old, what I am about to relate had no significance to me at the time but would have been useful to a German spy if I had known one.
Bevy used to take me to Alloa where her husband John had a lawyer's office. As part of the trips we used to go for walks along the dock area by the Forth. There were some rusted, old, disused railway lines which were not really interesting because no trains ran along them. Then one day Bevy noticed that the points on the rusty line had all been newly greased. Again, not very interesting, but raised a question in my infant mind as to what might be the significance of this event within my near ground level environment. A later visit revealed a line of landing craft parked up on the docks. Not being exciting looking ships, I did not think much of them. Only many years later, I realised that I had witnessed the preparations for D-Day and the policy of scattering the landing craft far from the South Coast, many in Scotland.
Next door to the manse on Kenilworth Road where we lived was a large house called Logie Asson. This was the Officers' Mess of a Polish tank regiment and many of them used to climb over the wall-stile and were made welcome. I used to climb over to them and was always herded back by someone. One day, about lunchtime, I climbed over and was not sent back. I was picked up by a Polish officer, taken indoors and sat down at the head of a long table lined with officers at each side. There was a plate of spam in front of me, so I got stuck in. I love spam, then as now. Then they all suddenly stood up and a very stern looking man came in and took a very dim view of me eating his spam. This was their commanding officer. They all had a good laugh, I managed to steal very little of his spam and was hurriedly escorted back home next door. I remember feeling cheated, we didn't get spam very often.
The Victory parade was a bit of a bore. I wanted aeroplanes, tanks and guns and exciting things, all we had were plain trucks and lorries going slowly down the street. I had occasionally seen a long RAF vehicle with a broken aeroplane on the back and that was good. I also had a ride in one of the Poles' tanks, which I hated at the time and yelled until they let me out of the escape hatch at the bottom. So the Victory parade was small beer.
One thing has stuck in my mind; being short as a four-year-old, my level was in line with the vehicle wheels and to underline the importance of the occasion, alternate wheel nuts on the many lorries had been painted red and white. This impressed me enormously and was a fitting tribute in my mind to signify a victory.
I remember the war as being a drab colour, all brown, khaki annd muted. Red and white wheel nuts were heralding a new colourful dawn, and that things were changing.
Therefore, like the American commander at Bastogne, who is immortalised for replying 'nuts' to the German surrender demand, my war is most memorable for my encounters, in various forms, with nuts.

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