大象传媒

submitted on behalf of Mrs Vera Wragg by Matlock Library staff.

My childhood memories are of the blackout and seeing my elderly aunt who had come to visit in daylight but going back after darkness with a lighted candle in a jam jar, then returning after some minutes to inform ny mother that the candle had blown out.
I remember the ducks we kept in the back garden to eke out the one a week egg ration and the awful smell from them and their mashed up duck food which I ladled out of a bucket. How did they always escape so many times from the wire mesh enclosure? Waddling and quacking up the road with my mother and I waving our arms trying to head them back into the garden was so embarrassing.
I visualise our small fiery tempered red haired neighbour coming into our living room and relating the conversation with the butcher she had when he offered her a lamb chop for her weekly ration of meat.
I also see the men in their black suits wearing tin helmets and an arm band on each of which the letters A.R.P was emblazoned, thus proclaiming then VIP's. Walking up and down the roads looking for any tiny pin prick of light showing through the blackout curtains and ordering the householder to remedy the offence at once or be summonsed. It was quite worrying for anyone of a nervous disposition to be told they could be attracting German aircraft to our road!

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