大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/大象传媒 Radio Nottingham on behalf of John Ward and P Sapey with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

The first thinig I remember about the war was where I was when I heard the news that the war had been declared. It was Sunday and my older sister and I had been to the Weslian Chapel and was on the way home. We stood underneath the Ash tree on Old Road, the stretch between the maypole and the nook. When Leslie Pritchard caught us up, he also lived off Woodhouse Lane and informed us of the startling news. The following weeks involved air raid warning practices with sirens while at school and each child had to have an address to run to, our's was great aunt Emma Georges's across the road from school.
At home I remember father and mother fitting blackout blinds to the windows and then dad digging out an underground air raid shelter. Fortunately though we never needed to use it. Rationing was one of the major bug bares. We were always short of sugar and I can remember always having a permanent longing for something sweet. As a family though we faired better than average for other commodities as we had plenty of garden produce and kept fowls, ducks, rabbits and pigs, so it was always eggs and bacon for breakfast.
With the advent of evacuation the children's population of Woodhouse Lane more than doubled. So we had extra playmates but I believe only for a limited period. It involved a shift system at school to accommodate the extra children. I remember being on mornings one week up until 1pm and then 12 o'clock until 4.30-5pm the next week, also Saturday mornings were included. Also for one year at least the Midsummer holiday was reduced to two weeks.
One of the evacuees named Derek Pierce was a great friend of mine about the same age and from Birmingham, we spent many happy hours roaming the fields climbing in the woods, I was sorry when he left to go back home.
Wartime due to shortages in the shops was very much make do and mend time, at home nothing was dispensed with until it was wore out and most families had a hobbing foot to carry out shoe and boot repairs. I remember my first efforts at this during the latter part of the War.
I used to enjoy a visit to Stanton Hill cinema and seeing an update about how we were faring in the War I believe it was called the Gaumont British News. I've always been interested in news programmes and its still my favourite viewing.
With the ending of Worls War 2 and the knowledge of all the suffering caused throughout the World and huge loss of life I was amazed that our Prime Minister volunteered for our country to take part in another one!

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