大象传媒

We left Richmond, Surrey in 1940 because of the bombing and moved to Battison Street to a very old lady who did lacemaking. She took in my pregnant mother and two girls and my father got lodgings by the old cattle market. We moved to a flat in Pembroke Street when my brother was born, then to Victoria Road. When in Pembroke Street I was looking out of the window and saw a British plane spiralling down and it crashed where the bus station now is. When we lived in Victoria Street we counted all the American planes going over in formation from Thurleigh and Twinwoods and a couple of hours later they'd come back, and we could see the damage to wings, and that they had tails missing, and my father would say, 'I don't know if they're going to make it when they come down to land.'
There were the barracks and Grange Camp near the park in Kempston and we'd see all the ranks and formations of soldiers coming down Victoria Road and the whole road would be full of marching soldiers.
The house in Victoria Road was very cold. It had draughty sash windows and tar lino. The only heating was from the little oven in the range downstairs and sometimes we would leave the door open to let the heat out. Once our fluffy cat, which used to go in because of the warmth, got shut in and when the door was opened it came out panting.
There was a fish and chip shop off Ampthill Road. Sometimes they had fish, sometimes oil, and sometimes potatoes. If the word came round they were frying, we kids would rush off and get chips.
Mr Hands was a fruiterer in Ampthill Road. Only once did he have oranges. Word went round very quickly. I was twelve or thirteen years old and I was allowed one orange - the only one I had the whole of the war.
My aunt in America used to send us food parcels and clothes - the first whole chicken in a tin we'd seen, and we were amazed at that, and a tin of pineapple.
Clothing was in short supply. I had this coat and after the war when longer coats were fashionable, we added a strip of plaid to the hem to make it longer.
My father got a job in the Accounts Department at London Brick. He was not in the forces as he had lost a leg when he was only 17 in the First World War. And at night he went as a nightwatchman at Grafton Cranes. My sister and I would take him sandwiches and soup at about 7 p.m. and he kept this up for 5 months.
I remember seeing on Ampthill Road where there was Robertsons and Kempston Road where the Britannia Works were, hundred of ladies wearing scarves - snoods - over their hair coming out of work. One girl had had her hair caught in a machine and it had taken her scalp off.
I worked on a Saturday. I loved animals so I worked in the cattle market from 9-3p.m. and this Jack in charge of the calves and pigs gave me sixpence but my mother complained I got messy. The Smith family were selling ponies at 拢10 a time and I was always asking my father for one.
In the war the Americans used to come in trucks and jeeps and park them on the cattle market in the evenings when they were off duty.
When the fair came - Thurston's - two or three times a year, it was packed with people at the side of the cattle market site. We children used to ask the Americans for gum or sweets or money for a ride.
Willshaws the fish shop the the High Street kept a pet goose and it used to wander in the High Street. We used to queue up for fish. We would join a queue if we saw one, and then ask what we were queuing for.
A landgirl used to come round delivering the milk to Victoria Road with a pony and cart. I went to Silver Jubilee School and enjoyed the school dinners. We had a lot of potato and cabbage and the pepper tasted wonderful. We had meat too, and rice pudding. When we had cookery lessons the school supplied us with food. I remember making doughnuts and brandy snaps, but the first thing we made was vegetable stew with swede. I tended to eat the things we'd made on the way home which annoyed my mother as I was supposed to take them home. I was milk monitor which meant I could drink any left over.
We had a joint on Sunday, then cold meat on Monday because it was wash day. I sometimes asked my mother, 'Where's your dinner' and she'd say, 'Oh, I'm not hungry' and I realise now she was going without so we could eat.
When the 大象传媒 came to Bedford in Rothsay Road, and were having concerts at the Corn Exchange and in St Paul's, we children would go there from school and we'd do the clapping. We'd be told when to clap. The recordings were done in the daytime because of the bombing at night. The Corn Exchange used to be used for meals for the Forces off duty if there was no concert.
One day my sister saw three bombs drop,(there was no air raid warning) and one fell on a bungalow in Spring Road and an old lady was killed.
In the war my father hired a trap from Wally Ribble a second hand dealer for 12 shillings and we'd go up to relations at Jackman's Farm at the foot of Cleat Hill.
I learned tap dancing from Miss Brooks when she was 73. She taught us in a room upstairs at the Greorge and Dragon and it cost ninepence. We used to put on shows in the Shire Hall.
There was Tony Arpino, an ice-cream salesman who was a rugby player. He used to have small parts in films as a boxer. There were a crowd of rugby players that used to go to the Red Lion in the High Street and were called 'men of the Lion'.
At the end of the war when my mother and our neighbour and her daughter and I heard the end had come we rushed down to the river to celebrate with all the forces, and I remember people climbing lamposts. Sybil and I were singing, 'Let him go, let him tarry, let him sink or let him swim' which was a hit at the time. We went down to the river across the Suspension Bridge to Russell Park and all the WAAFs and Americans and Forces were dancing and going mad.
One day I was coming home from school over St John's Bridge and a train had pulled up at St John's Station and I was shocked and horrified to see all these skinny men standing on the platform. The WVS were there feeding them, and the Red Cross and then they went on the train again. Later I realised they must have been prisoners of the Japanese.

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