大象传媒

The first two years of schooling at Manchester were organised in three separate sites, one was the main school,one was in north Manchester and the other was at Sale High school,which was only about two miles from home and so we decided that was for me.
During the first few weeks that we were at school, a gang of men were digging long air raid shelters down one side of the playing field. We were given air raid practice every now and then and when the siren sounded we all had to quickly go down and sit in the shelter.
Almost from the very start of the war we began to have food shortages, because all imported food was competing for ship space with armaments,and so the rationing scheme was set up.
Eggs were in short supply and all we were able to buy in the shops was dried egg, this was a yellow powder, which was quite satisfactory in baking and passable in scrambled eggs but useless for fried eggs.
We bought three khaki Campbell ducks because these were the best breed for egg production. We built a pen in the garden and fed them on kitchen scraps, garden
waste, as well as all the slugs we could find.
In one corner of the garden we built an air raid shelter, this was designed by father based on a first world war dugout. this would have been alright for sheltering from German shells, but for night air raids which went on for a long time. It was far too uncomfortable so we abandoned it in favour of the house.
At first we hid under the stairs and then my father made sloping roofs between the piano and the wall and between the bookcas and the wall. I slept behind the piano and Jean behind the bookcase. My parents slept underneath the dining room table.
My father was in charge of the firewatchers at his work.
I became a fireguard messenger where my job was to cycle to the fire station if the fire looked like getting out of hand, because the phones were unreliable.
After an air raid Jean and I used to walk round the local streets looking for shrpanel, this was mainly from anti-aircraft shells and sometimes we would find over a hundred pieces in one day, and if we were early and the raid had only just finished we would sometimes find ones that were still warm. the biggest prize was the nose cone from a shell.

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