大象传媒

Whenever I walk or drive along the sea front at Southsea, or look at it from the cross channel ferry, and watch families enjoying themselves on the beach or one of the piers, I think about how different it all was when I was a child.
Rarely, as a treat, and when the weather was cloudy and air raids were unlikely, my mum would take me to the beach. But NOT to build sand castles or paddle in the sea. Access to the beach wa impossible with great swathes of barbed wire and even had we been able to get through, there was the danger of explosives.
What we went there for was to stick our savings stamps on one of the empty bomb shells placed at intervals along the esplanade. We would "lick and stick" our stamps, 6 pence, a shilling, even sometimes half a crown, on to these shells. I was never convinced thatthey wouldn`t blow up if I pressed too hard. I often wondered who had the job of peeling them off again and sticking them in neat little rows in savings books like those we took to school every Monday morning with a sixpence clutched in our hands. I realised much later of course that it was by NOT sticking them into our own books and using them to buy Savings Certificates that went to help the war effort.
How marvellous it was when the barbed wire and shell cases finally disappeared and the beaches could be used again. But it was decades before the "Beware of Dangerous Objects" boards were removed.

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