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I was 8 years old. We used to go down in the shelter, just outside our house and we all got the itch down in the shelter, scabies. We had to go to the cleansing station in Holloway Road and be bathed. The nurse would come round and look in your heads.

Our school, Pentonville Prison, Caledonian Rd and Barnsbury Station all got bombed in one night. There was a gun running up and down the railway, it was called Big Bertha. We used to see all the troops go by on their way to war. My dad was in the army, he was wounded, he never talked about his experiences in the war.

We used to have to queue up ages for a quarter of coal to make a fire. We’d get 2 ounces of tea, 4 ounces of sugar, meat only on a Sunday. Through the week we used to have powdered egg, spam, corned beef (a quarter used to go round for 6 people). There was the black market, where you could go to the ‘Banana King’ to get bananas. We even recycled the tea leaves by drying them in the oven.

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