大象传媒

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I was 4 and living in Inner London (EC1). My brother came home from school and said that he was going to 鈥渢he country.鈥� This was pre-television and we had no idea what that word meant. Our world was grey pavements, red brick tenements, scraggy plain trees, and the odd weed that survived didn鈥檛 last long! But if he was going, so was I! I screamed and hollered for 3 days. My mother lay in bed and cried (we didn鈥檛 understand that her babies were being taken away from her). Anyway, I won and off I went with a label around my neck and a pillowcase, with my 鈥渢hings鈥� attached to my shoulders. At the station we were herded into a packed train, many of us standing. Our big adventure had begun.

We arrived at Wheatley (a station that no longer exists) and were transferred by Charabang to a village called Cuddesdon. The first thing we noticed was all this green stuff- grass, trees, flowers (to us things that you bought in a shop and stuck in a vase). Then we couldn鈥檛 understand what the people said (broad Oxfordshire) and they couldn鈥檛 understand us (broad Cockney). We did realise that they didn鈥檛 like us. They were convinced that we were dirty and called us guttersnipes.

We were taken to a hall and stood whilst people chose who they wanted- big boys to work on the farms and big girls for housework. Us little ones were left until last. Then my brother got picked and he and I rarely saw each other for the rest of the war. In the first house I lived they were unkind to me; not enough to eat and they made me wear Wellingtons with no socks- this was to save washing as there was no running water but, of course, my feet were covered in blisters. My parents arrived with the rest of our things and I hollered as loud to come home as I had to go. But my mother had a job at Mount Pleasant and my father was being sent abroad. They changed my billet instead. The second couple were wonderful as they had no children and treated me like a daughter. In fact, had my parents not survived the war they had arranged to adopt me. I still return to visit their grave.

As well as the 鈥済reen stuff鈥� we had to get used to the animals. We were used to horses, as most tradesmen鈥檚 carts were horse drawn in those days, and the cats (nobody had a dog in our part of town). There were huge things with horns, great grey woolly things, snakes, spiders, and rabbits that had to be caught to eke out our rations. But the worst were the chickens- nasty, unfriendly things. Most of the evacuees hated it and went home only to be killed in the Blitz. I have a photograph of them, as we Londoners had to be educated separately. Me- once I had acclimatised I loved it (apart from the daily bullying I got from 3 girls). When the war was over I didn鈥檛 want to go home. The guttersnipe had turned into a country bumpkin.

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