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I was born the night the incendiary bombs fell on our road 16th March 1941.
My father was in a reserved occupation. He was foreman at the gasworks.
He was also in the AFS. He saw an incendiary bomb outside our front door and he rushed out and picked up a sandbag to put it out and then he spent the rest of the night putting out lots of other bombs. At the end of the evening he realised he had been running round without his shoes and had burned his feet so he always kept his boots by the door after that. All his mates thought it was very funny and laughed at him.

When I was a bit older ( But still very young) I noticed when the grocer called round that he cut the coupons out of the ration book. This looked like a good game to me so I cut up all the six family books into little pieces. So mother had to go to the food office and she was told to stick them all back together. It took her three nights. I wasn’t very popular and got a good smack.

At the end of the war I wanted to know why Grandad’s piano was on the pavement. Well we were having a street party! My mum told me it was Grandad’s birthday, which it was too. We had a huge bonfire in the middle of the road and there was a burnt patch in the road for years afterwards.
My sister got married to a Canadian in 1954. She went on honeymoon and when she got back she went to the butcher’s and got out her ration books and the butcher said “ We don’t need those any more “. They had done away with rationing while she was away. She took her books to Canada when she emigrated

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