大象传媒

My mother, Vida Perkins, was born in Leicestershire in 1926. In 1938 the family moved to Coventry, as my grandfather, a miner, transferred to the colliery there.

Vida left school at age 14 in 1940 and, being artistic, went to work as a trainee window dresser in a big department store in the city centre, Owen Owen. She used to cycle to work and back each day from the family home on the edge of the city. As the war developed, her father built an Anderson shelter in the garden, and one night the family spent the whole night there whilst the bombs rained down on the city.

She told me how she tried to get into work the next morning on foot, climbing over rubble and looking in horror and fascination at the ruins of buildings she used to cycle past. Eventually she arrived in the city centre at the place where the store had been, but it was just a pile of bricks and rubble - nothing left at all.

As there was no store for her to work in, she and other staff were transferred to the company's other store in Liverpool, which had survived the bombing of that city. So she was moved up there and given accomodation in a hotel - all this and she was still just 14 years old!

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