大象传媒

On Monday, The local housing authority, issued to us, another house, in Hollydale Road, New Cross, about 1 mile away. A lovely house with a nice big garden, I remember. You were issued with new furniture, from a local depot. This issue was based on your alleged loss, and was free of charge. Many people made "fairy tale" claims about their furniture losses, and wound up with a far better home than they would have had, under normal circumstances. This furniture, was called "Utility" furniture. This meant that it was built to a basic, economic standard, but adequate. This symbol was also present on all clothing, and other household items. It became a very popular word in our conversations.
At this time, our cat, thought that it would be a good idea to have her litter of kittens, in the ward-robe. My Aunt Doll discovered this by mistake. She was getting something out of the ward robe for my Mum. She said "I didn,t know that you had a fox-fur", (all the rage at the time). My Mum replied, "I haven,t." They all realized then, that the cat had taken up residence.
But on the following Wednesday night, disaster, another heavy raid was taking place, I think the raiders were after the Surrey Docks, which were nearby.
My baby sister and I were asleep in a downstairs bedroom in a small bed. My Mother and Gran were in the kitchen. The raid got heavier, and my mother decided to get me and my sister up and bring us into the kitchen.
( We found out later that this bed was completely destroyed and covered in debris, from a collapsed wall and the floor above, another lucky escape).
We had a Morrison shelter, in the kitchen, we were all sheltering under this, when there came an almighty crash, total darkness and smoke again. The coal fire, which was burning opposite, was blown across the room onto my Grans legs, she suffered nasty burns. We went to the front door, the road was in chaos, debris everywhere, fires burning and people screaming (I can hear them even now). We ran down the bottom of the street, dodging the bricks and rubble in the road, into Queens Road, Peckham. Here, on the corner, was Evans Cooks Depositories, a large furniture warehouse, which was being used as the local A.R.P. Centre. We were given hot drinks and first aid, and taken to East Dulwich Hospital, where we stayed for 3 to 4 days. Unfortunately we never saw our cat, or the kittens again.
Air raids used to vary in intensity, some times we had an undisturbed night, other times, we were kept awake all night. Day time raids were also becoming frequent. I can recall coming out of school one day when we heard a loud roar, we looked up and saw a German bomber it had a distinct yellow underside and prominent black crosses, it was being pursued by a R.A.F. fighter. We were usherred quickly back into the school shelter. This bomber jettisoned his load, apparently, to gain speed. Unfortunately, this bomb load fell on a school in Lewisham, killing many children. On another occasion, a Saturday afternoon, a large bomb fell on New Cross, Woolworths, killing many people. Also opposite Lewisham Clock, Tower fell another, very large bomb, causing equal havoc.
We were running out of vacant houses now, so we were allocated a portion of the local unused school hall, which we shared with many other families. We used this as a base, until we were found a house in Cator Street ,Peckham, which we accepted gratefully. This house had a large garden, in which we kept chickens and rabbits, a lot of people did this, for extra food. Although we became too attached to these "pets" to eat them. One of our chickens had to live in our dining-room. My Mother said that it had rheumatism and had to be kept warm. How could you eat this creature? But we had the eggs, when they laid them. I was afraid to get these eggs from the nest. We had a large cockerel on guard, and he would attack you. I would liked to have eaten him, but I can,t remember whether we did.
We spent the rest of the war years here, ( with the exception of another "bomb out" and partial destruction, in 1943 ).
We used to always have lovely Christmases, during these years. A big party in my Aunt Dolls house, was the high-light. This house was in East Surrey Grove, One of the grown-ups would dress up as Santa Clause, there was a present for all, and party games. One Xmas, my cousin Lenny, and I, took a precious half bottle of Cointreau off a shelf, and drank it. We were violently sick. I have not touched a drop since. But they were lovely parties, I shall always remember them.
Unfortunately East Surrey Grove was the scene of yet another tragedy. My Aunt,s neighbours, the Hughes family, just a few doors away, did not have an air-shelter. They asked their neighbours, the Wrights, if they could share their shelter. It was in their rear garden. The bombing was quite heavy at this time. But a couple of nights later, this shelter received a direct hit, and the occupants were all killed. It was a terrible incident, but unfortunately similar events were occurring, all over London, at the time. My Aunt Doll,s next door neighbour, was on her way to the dentists in Trafalger Avenue, one day. A land-mine, ( a large bomb device ), fell in this road, and she was never found. Her neighbour on the other side, Eva King, was also bombed but she survived, and she is still with us today. Aunt Doll must have had a charmed life. My Uncle Toms, pal, Bill Derby, who he was in the Army, with, lost his entire family in an air-raid. What a dreadful thing to happen, especially, when you were serving abroad. Tragedy seemed all around at that time.
I was always "running errands" in those days. Whilst the grown-ups were playing cards, (which they did night and day) I was either getting drinks from the off-licence, or queuing up for groceries, or getting food for the chickens which we kept. Food, of course was now strictly rationed, and we had to survive on ridiculously small amounts of it. Two ounces of cheese, and butter, one egg, four ounces of bacon etc. per week. Miniscule, but apparently, enough to live on. There seemed to be queues every where for all sorts of reasons, whether it be for food or cinema seats or newspapers, almost any thing that you bought, you had to queue for, especially, in the rare event of unrationed food items. This caused the largest queues of all. This constant shortage of food, was eased, slightly, by the installing of Government run restaurants. We had one in a mission hall in Meeting House Lane, the next street to ours. They also, occupied empty office blocks, elsewhere. In the City, there was a large one on London Bridge, and there were many more in other suitable venues. In these establishments, you could buy a ticket for six pence, which you surrendered, at the counter, in exchange for a substantial dinner and mug of tea. A fourpenny ticket would buy you a pudding. Often treacle, or jam. Good basic food. These places were very popular, and large queues would form for these meals. Often gas supplies were cut-off due to the bombing, so you often couldn,t cook, even if you had the food. Our daily diet was also supplemented by National Dried Milk, Orange Juice Concentrate and Cod Liver Oil, supplied from the local "Food Office". These items were free of charge on production of a suitable Ration Book.
At school, we would all take our own spoons, and just before break, our teacher would take from her cupboard, an enormous tin of "Malt". We would queue, and she would dip our spoons in it, twist it around, and quickly proffer it into our mouths, it was delicious, and we loved it. This was also rationed. When the tin was nearly empty, chosen children, were allowed to scrape the remains from the tin, an extra treat for some lucky ones. We were all given daily, small bottles of milk, a third of a pint, I believe they were. It was lovely in summertime, but in winter, it was very often frozen solid. We would thaw it out under our jumpers. Other less pleasant, services, the school provided, was periodic visits, by the school dentist. Ugh! They would poke about in our mouths, and I am sure cause more trouble than they ever cured. They would recommend treatment for us to have. But these notes they gave to us, for our parents, never arrived home. Also "Nitty-Nora" would arrive and proceed to comb our hair, with a very fine steel comb, onto a piece of tissue paper. Looking for nits or fleas. This comb would stick into our heads and it hurt. In all, a most unpleasant experience. What with this, and the bombing, it wasn,t good enough!. Innoculations, were also now, being introduced, too, The first was against Diptheria, which was rife at the time.
As children, we also spent a lot of our time outside pubs, waiting for our parents to emerge. An occasional treat was a glass of ginger wine or an arrow-root biscuit from a jar on the counter. We would peer into these pubs, Gloomy and smoke filled, full of laughter and swearing. What dens they seemed, but an escape, I suppose from the constant air-raids. We would wait for some time, get fed up and go off with our mates for hours. Nobody seemed to be bothered. Our parents didn,t seem to care where we were.
As children we would continue to explore fresh "bombed ruins". Halfway down Trafalger Avenue, there was an enormous crater. Half filled with water and smelling of gas from broken pipes. There was always the smell of escaping gas and brick dust and burst drains. It seemed to permeate the air everywhere. Next to this crater, on its side was number 63 'bus. Empty, we were told, when the bomb dropped. But then they would say that when you think about. Not good for morale, to admit to bus loads of people being injured. A lot of facts were kept dark at that time.
Anyway, opposite this house, in Cator Street, was a large school, which was partly destroyed by bombing. It also had a very large play-ground. This playground contained four surface air-raid shelters, we used to sometimes use these, but they were very damp and unpopular. This playground also featured strongly in our playdays. In the ground was a very large puddle, almost a small pond in size. To us it seemed like a lake. We used to sail our small home-made boats in this muddy water. Rescuing them , meant that our feet were nearly always soaking wet, and our socks and shoes, much to the annoyance of our long-suffering parents. We would skate pieces of slate across this pond and watch it spin up and across. One of these impaled into my leg, causing a nasty gash, and I spent the rest of the day in hospital having stitches. Raymond was the culprit, I wonder if he remembers?
We used to explore the fascinating interior of this very large old Victorian school, It had lots of dark corridors and small rooms. This is where we would set up our "camps" and store our little secret goodies. We used to climb up and out onto the roof, which was over 80 feet from the ground, perch fearlessly on the outside, on the rafters, (the roof slates had been blown off in the bombing), and admire the view of London. You could see St.Pauls, and Tower Bridge from here. Our parents would "call us down", but we would hide and ignore these requests. My Dad, would often call up, for us to come down. He was obviously very worried, about our predicament. But he was also ignored. How could I treat this lovely man in this manner. I must have been a "sod". Sometimes we were actually chased by the Police, but they couldn,t catch us, we were too agile. This was even greater fun, we thought.
We noticed that this roof was lined in part with lead flashing. We removed this over a period of some weeks, rolled it up and stored in one of the play-ground sheds. It was very hard and heavy work, and of course dangerous. We negotiated a price for this plunder from "Smales", the local scrap merchant. This was going to be our holiday spending money. We went to collect the rolled up lead from the shed one morning, and discovered to our horror, that it had disappeared. Somebody had discovered our "treasure" and sold it instead. What a dissapointment. We consoled ourselves , then by stripping all the brass gas fittings, from the school rooms and sold them instead. We only got a pittance for this metal. We had been exploited by this mean scrapmerchant.

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