大象传媒

"A knitting class or sewing class, or some people if they could get the materials were even drawing and painting. There were quite a few budding artists during the war. [Knitting] for the forces, mainly. Well, I think that wasn鈥檛 rationed the wool for the Navy, but if you wanted coloured wool or anything like that of course it was rationed, but pretty generous, pretty generous. Your railings [were commandeered], my mother got upset, because the railings round the cemetery went, and my father said 鈥渨ell nobody wants to get in, and certainly nobody can鈥檛 get out, so why worry鈥� [laughs]. If you had railings in front of your house they took those. They put them back after the war, but some people didn鈥檛 want them put back after the war. Things like that was all part of the war effort as they called it. Anything 鈥� I think tins and things like that 鈥� you had a dump to take them to, that helped. People got more conscious of saving things I think. Clothing they used to collect. Well of course we had cotton industry and a woollen industry, well all that鈥檚 gone now. There was all the machinery and devices there to sort of reconstitute things that were given away and sort of no longer needed. That helped. Any [building] near a military area, they would find somebody somewhere else to live and take that over. The school where Keith and Bruce went, the Air Force took that over, and they had the pilots, training pilots there. They used to go into the village. They鈥檇 have a little sort of sing-song in the village hall. To get a little bit of amusement. They were very good to the children that were left there. Sort of thing. A good spirit, normal run of the mill, everybody helped each other. You might have got one family where, well, where there was a bit of animosity before the war, all that was sort of buried and they were the best of friends. Which was a good thing too."

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