大象传媒

I was born in Greyfriars Walk, Bedford in October 1937 so I was two years old when the war started. I can remember as a child everything seemed so exciting, the Blackouts, going to school and having air raid sirens and having to go in the shelter and also at night sitting under the stairs.

Food was hard to get, there was always queues for anything. We used to keep chicks in a shed for eggs or meat or exchange or barter for other things. We (my brother and I) used to take an old pram over to the gas works in Queens Park to get coke for the fires.

Our house was only two up and two down, outside toilet, no bathroom except the tin bath on a Friday night and everybody had to use it. Water heated in the copper in the kitchen.

We had children evacuated with us some only a short time mostly from London. We had one called Anthony (Jammy) Jamison. He came from Sleaford with his mother and two brothers. They had to be billeted in other areas of Bedford. We had two sisters and they stayed with us. We just slept in a big bed.

I can remember a man on a bike riding down the street and he was waving his arm about (seems it was Adrian Boult!)

I remember the plane crashing in the street, it was my friend's uncle's 'lavvie' (toilet) that it landed on.

We as children were invited to parties that the Americans gave in Bromham Road and above Longhurst & Skinner.

My dad was a warden and my brother was a runner for the AFS.

Health was always the worry because it cost 2/6d for doctor to call. I know I had measles and couldn't be taken to the Air Raid shelter and mum and I laid under the table.

My brother Peter who was eight years older than myself was going to school at Queens Park and was on the top of the Ford End Road bridge when he and his mates saw a plane dropping what they thought were flour bags but they were incendiaries trying to get the railway station and Allens.

When the wireless said the war was over we all went to Midland Road near Longhurst & Skinners and celebrated, dancing and singing.

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