大象传媒

In 1944 came the journey of my life. I remember nothing of the journey to London. Only a long train journey with my mother. We arrived at Newcastle station where my mother handed me over to a complete stranger whose accent I could hardly understand. My mother then walked away down the empty platform without looking back. I can still see her back view as she walked out of my life maybe for ever. (Very traumatic.)

The stranger was my mother's youngest sister my Aunt Margaret. She turned out to be very nice and not nearly as strict as my mother. We boarded the train and traveled on to Edinburgh, where we boarded a local train for Kirkcaldy in Fife. Going over the Forth Rail Bridge for my first time I was given pennies to throw out of the window for luck and told to make a wish. I wished that this horrible thing that I didn't understand called War would stop and that people would be nice to each other. I also wished that my father would be better and able to walk again. I never told anyone my wishes.

When we reached Kirkcaldy there was a most peculiar smell everywhere. It came from the linoleum factories of Barry, Ostler & Shepherd, and Michael Nairn.

At Kirkcaldy station my Aunt Margaret had to show papers. She had my green Ration Book but Kirkcaldy was in a restricted area and she didn't have the correct papers for me. As a result I was an unauthorised person in a restricted area and could have been spying. So I was supposed to report regularly at the Police station. My Uncle Alec kept explaining that my mother had to work and my father disabled and the Police kept insisting that I must return home. In the end my Uncle said "If you want that child to go back to London, then you'll have to take her because I'm not." We never heard another thing and I stayed.

Kirkcaldy is on the Firth of Forth and not far away was Rosyth Royal Navy Dockyard and also the Aluminium factory at Burntisland. My aunt Margaret's husband Alexander Grant (born and bred in Kirkcaldy), was a boilermaker at Rosyth Dockyard and later he worked at the Aluminium Factory.

They were lovely people and looked after me as their own. They had already lost one baby. They had an upstairs flat in Viceroy Street. The garden was divided into four pocket handkerchief size gardens with a communal rectangular lawn at the far end known as the green. There were corner posts and each family had their allocated day for hanging out their washing on their own line, but never on a Sunday. My Uncle Alec had a small shed and kept a few canaries. There was a whole wall of cages but he only had a few birds by then due to the difficulty of obtaining seed for them.

I had hardly begun to settle down into this rather nice life when my Aunt checked my hair with a fine "nit" comb. I flinched at one point and she checked my scalp even more thoroughly. "Alec I'm sure I saw something move!" He came and looked just to please her but had to agree there was something there.

The Doctor examined my scalp with a large magnifying glass, and with a pair of tweezers removed a Tick which he placed on his desk blotter with the glass over it. I stood at nose level to the desk to look at it. I was given some lovely pink medicine to take. It was thought I must have collected the Tick on the train from London as I did not live in the country and doubt if I'd been near a sheep. As a result of this whenever the Doctor came to the flat I would bury my head under a settee cushion, assuming that he couldn't see my bottom sticking up in the air.

My mother had sent by train my cot with Mickey Mouse mattress and my dolls pram. Unfortunately when the pram arrived both wheels on one side were broken. Uncle Alec tried everywhere to get some but couldn't so I wheeled the pram around the flat all lopsided.

It was wonderful to play with other children and play in the street. Little traffic then. I remember a girl called Vera Doll from the next 'back' who used to take me to Saturday morning pictures.

However, my first visit to the cinema was memorable. Uncle Alec took me and on the way he bought me an ice cream cornet from the Italian Ice Cream shop. My uncle met a friend and as they talked I licked the ice cream, which stuck to the tip of my tongue and promptly fell on the wet pavement. There was no spare money for another so that was that. I think the film was Snow White. When we sat down in the dark the News was being shown. This of course was about the War and very noisy. "I don't like it Uncle Alec. It's too noisy." I said and walked out. I had left the War behind in Epsom and I didn't want any reminder of it. I don't remember any air raids in Scotland.

I contracted Whooping Cough whilst in Kirkcaldy and remember lying in the alcove by the fire, on my Mickey Mouse mattress making awful noises as I tried to get my breath.

I don't know how long I stayed in Scotland, but I was told that if the War had looked like going on another year they would have started me at school there. As it was I didn't start school at Pound Lane Epsom, until around the end of the War and the first thing we did was march into the big air raid shelter in the playground. I'd never been in a communual shelter and wondered why we were in there as the War had almost finished.

One afternoon when we were all sitting in the living room, there was a tap on the window and there was my mother. My father was at the foot of the stairs in his wheel chair. No one told me they were coming. There was only one bedroom in the flat and an inside toilet but no bathroom. My father had a bed in the hall. I don't remember where my mother slept.

We were not there very long as my Aunt Margaret was expecting another baby. My mother didn't want us to be the cause of her losing a second baby so we went to stay with my mother's parents in Fauldhouse, West Lothian. (My aunt's second baby only lived a few hours. After the War they adopted a baby girl, my cousin Maureen.)

Thomas and Annie Flynn (nee Donachie) lived at 12 Portland Terrace, a row of miners cottages, long since demolished. How we all fitted in for sleeping I don't know but I had to sleep in a bed in the wall in the living room cum kitchen. A curtain was drawn across the opening. Years later my cousin Maureen said how frightened she had been sleeping there because the firelight threw shadows across the curtain. I knew just how she felt.

My mother was out one day and my grandmother gave me lunch, a plate of potatoes with milk poured over, which I liked. It must have been difficult to stretch the food for extra mouths even with our rations.
I still have the telegram given to me by my Aunt Annie that my mother sent from Epsom to Fauldhouse announcing her impending arrival, "Find room. Travelling tonight. Donhue." stamped 20 July 1944.

My mother came from a large family and they all lived in the village, though my memories of them and my grandfather at that time are hazy. Grandfather was a retired miner but had been a ploughman as a young man and grandmother had been a milkmaid.

We did not stay long in Fauldhouse. I remember the journey home on the train as the Guard found us an empty carriage and ensured we had it to ourselves. This meant my father could lie along one seat and my mother and I shared the other. All the blinds were pulled down and in the morning the Guard brought us a can of tea. There were no problems getting my father moved on and off trains as any service men around were willing to help.

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