大象传媒

I was born in 1938, so my memories are the scattered memories of a young child. An early memory is of 'Bonfire Night', probably 1940 or '41, when friends, with a shop, found some sparklers and I had my first experience of fireworks, sitting around the fire, blackout closed and lights out.
I remember, too, one sunny morning when wave after wave of planes flew over our house in Woking. With my parents we rushed from front to back of the house as they came towards us, flew over towards the coast and off into the distance. I have no idea which episode of the war this was part of, but I feel I was older - perhaps 4 or 5, so 1943/4.
I started school in September 1943, we lived at the top of a hill. A neighbour's son would take his little brother and me to school - it seemed a long walk, with my chubby legs, we went to Goldsworth Road school. I remember one morning we were half way there when the siren went. I remember the boy hesitating while he worked out what to do - to run these two youngsters uphill, back home, or on to school. To school we went and ended up puffing and panting in the shelter with other children. How damp and smelly I remember it being.
We had no shelter - as a 'baby' I was but to sleep under the dining room table, a heavy red chenille cloth to the floor, and I went to sleep to the murmur of my parents conversation.
We often had a 'lodger' usually the wife of an officer from the barracks at Aldershot. Some Sundays the husbands would come for lunch, too. My father, a great talker, charged with looking after me, but more interested in the conversation, helped me to a large dollop of the mustard I was asking for! It was forty years before I tried it again!
My father was in the ARP as he had a 'dicky' knee. At the end of 1943 it became worse and he could no longer climb ladders, etc, so we moved back up to Southport on the Lancashire coast.
When the war ended the fairy lights, all along Lord Street, were switched on in celebration and I was taken by my parents the full bus ride from Crossens to Clinsdale and back. The wonder of all the lights, to a child of 6 years, has stayed with me - we had the front seat upstairs going - and those lights are still special to me.

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