大象传媒

Because of my parents' concern over the danger from air-raids, when I came into the world in 1940 it was not in my home town of Luton but in the village of Kimpton, Herts, a few miles away, where they had both been born in 1912. I was delivered at the village post office where my grandmother was postmistress!

Dad was away serving in the RAF and, apart from my elder brother, my world was very much female dominated - mum, grandma, my big sister, Mrs Purnell and her daughter, Gwen, over the road. Men were essentially alien beings, to be regarded with, at best, suspicion and, at worst, open hostility.

Although I was perfectly friendly towards his wife, a little wren of a woman, my real bogey-man was the chap who lived next door - too old to join up and therefore very much on the scene. In later years I came to realize what a pleasant, inoffensive fellow he was - but then.....! At the very sight of him I would run screaming behind my mother's skirts and any attempt to get me to be friends with him would end in the most unholy of tantrums - I even once kicked him on the shin!

And what had the poor chap done to merit such appalling treatment? Nothing. It's just that his name was Littler - and I blamed him for everything: my mum's anxieties, the sirens, the searchlights, the drone of planes at night, the claustrophobic hours under the stairs! In vain did my mum try to persuade me that it wasn't Mr Littler who was responsible but another, very wicked, man who lived hundreds of miles away. How could it be? Mr Littler was there - in person. He did it all!

In later years, when the war was long over, Mr Littler and I became quite good friends, chatting over the fence about our local football team, the Hatters, and having the occasional laugh when we recalled those earlier years. But it was a while before I was really sure!

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