大象传媒

1943

I do not have too many memories from when I was sixteen, the most vivid ones are from when the war started a few years before.

I lived in Cardiff in a big industrial area near the docks. Not much happened for a while. My brother, sisters and I had quite a long way to go to school, There were no air raid shelters built there, so when the air raid sirens went off at the start of a raid we all had to run all the way home, usually very frightened! Sometimes when we arrived home the `All Clear' went off, and back to school we had to go. This went on for some time.

`Anderson' shelters were put in our gardens. When the raids got worse we all spent many nights in them. The raids were very bad at times, once damaging our roof and windows. We had to move and were lucky to find a larger house about a mile further away from school, so we had a long walk to go. Things were very hard for some time. Food was short, and we often had to queue at a cake factory nearby for a bag of cake pieces every Saturday morning.

About this time I was nearing my fourteenth birthday. The headmistress sent for me and asked if I had a job to go to when I left school, At that time you left on your birthday. When I said "No" she found one for me, and I had to start the next day. It was in a large department store, in the offices, and I was there for many years.

There wasn't much of a social life at that time, we spent most of our free time at home. By the time I was sixteen the war had still not ended, and things were still `difficult'. Not much thought was given to boyfriends. Although we didn't go very far, we were happy at home making our own amusements.

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