大象传媒

Wartime Memories

I was ten when the war started. I had two older sisters and during the war they couldn鈥檛 get hold of silk stockings or nylons. I remember them putting gravy browning on their legs before they went out at night and then they used to stand on a stool and I had to paint a black line down the back of their legs to make it look like the seam of a stocking.

I remember the ARP blokes guarding Carlisle Bridge. They used to train the ARP Wardens on St. George鈥檚 Quay but they didn鈥檛 have rifles, they used to march with broomsticks on their shoulders. As kids we used to tease them.

We lived on Chestnut Grove on the Marsh and there was an air-raid shelter in a field that we used to call 鈥榯he cabbage patch.鈥� It鈥檚 where they鈥檝e built Willow Nursery School now. When the siren used to go my mother would take us three kids to the shelter but if my father was in bed he wouldn鈥檛 get up and go to the shelter, he stayed in bed.

They were still finishing building the Marsh Estate then and we used to run errands for the workmen. They always wanted ten Woodbines but to be able to buy Woodbines, you had to buy ten Pashas as well. Pashas were awful cigarettes that stank but the workmen used to give us the Pashas for going to the shop for them. Other cigarettes available then were Kensitas and they used to have four extra on the end of the packet with the words 鈥淔our for your friends.鈥� And the workmen also used to give us those four for going for them.

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