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"While I was living in Hayes, before the bomb that affected all the buildings, houses etc. blew all the windows and, and until they could sort of make them safe again, my sister-in-law, Marjorie, she came to stay with me, she had a couple of days — she was working — and she had a couple of days and she spent it with me. I always remember we made some plum jam, and we’d got another lot ready in the jam-maker on the gas stove and the siren went, and then the guns started going. And we thought we turned everything off — on the stove. We flew down the garden to get in the Anderson shelter with the children, and also one of the people next door, because their shelter was overfilled by friends that were with them, and we sort of chatted away to each other and in the distance we could hear these bombs, explosions etc. Eventually the all clear went, and when we came out into the garden the jam that we had left, we didn’t realise we hadn’t turned the heat off under it. The jam was all over the stove, and the kitchen, and everything else. Plums everywhere. We had to set to and get it clean, because it was sticking to everything. And now, whenever I buy plum jam, which I do like, it takes me back to that day. Yes."

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