大象传媒

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My family had moved from Upper Norwood to Ramsgate in 1939 because my mother had wanted us to live in a healthier environment.

In 1940, bombs started to fall on the coast. A batch of three fell near our house with one of the bombs landing on a nearby cemetery causing a tombstone to fly through the roof of the house next door.

I had just started school, but my parents decided we would be safer in London. My father was a railway worker and had to stay in digs while he endeavoured to get a transfer back to London. The air raids, unerringly, followed us back to Norbury where we relocated.

My father, travelling from Ramsgate on his day off, arrived one morning to find a neighbouring house demolished and our house empty with all the windows blown in. This fact, together with information from the A.R.P. that a woman and her two daughters had disappeared, led him to assume the worst. Happily, we were safe. My mother had walked us, after our near escape, into the next road and had knocked on a stranger鈥檚 door and we had been welcomed in.

There were many other incidents that I remember, but this one seemed unique in the manner in which our family seemed fated to attract the greatest dangers whilst remaining unharmed by them.

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