大象传媒

During the war both my parents helped out as civilians with often harrowing rescue work in the bombing raids on Birmingham, where they had married in January 1941, and where I was eventually born in 1943.

The year before their wedding, my father, Edwin 'Ted' Simmonds, was already carving out a successful career in the catering equipment industry. He was living and working in the Midlands when the Luftwaffe launched its devastating attack on Coventry on the night of 14 November 1940.

The following morning the city and its cathedral were in ruins. Its communications, essential services and supplies, including water and electricity, were seriously damaged.

When my dad entered the city with colleagues, and began talking to its dazed inhabitants, one topic came into almost every conversation - the one thing everyone desperately needed was a cup of tea! If they could get a good cuppa down them they could cope, and begin to tackle the formidable task of clearing and rebuilding Coventry.

Dad's mind went into overdrive. He got together as many other people as he could find to gain access to public buildings and offer their expertise, and between them they made use of one of the very few tall buildings still standing to engineer a head of running water and generate just enough emergency power to start the life-saving business of boiling kettles!

Thus refreshed, the traumatised but heroic people of Coventry began to struggle back to work.

Dad only told me about this shortly before he died in 1993. He said, 'If there is any single thing that I have done that I am really proud of, it was being able to give the bombed city of Coventry its first cup of tea.'

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