大象传媒

We lived near the railway line in Bristol that went on to the port at Avonmouth. I was eight years old and walked each day to the prep department of Bristol Grammar School sometimes the day after a raid. What would bring back memories would be the pungent, bitter smell of water on burnt buildings. One night many of the houses in Cromwell Road beside the line were destroyed, often only one of a pair of semis was razed to the ground leaving bathrooms and lavatories exposed. But why I am writing is the memory of a completely detroyed semi just leaving the fireplaces on the party wall. Above the fireplace was, of course, a mantlepiece and I remember, exposed as on a cliff face, one particular shelf with every ornament on it completely undisturbed.

Incidently, in an early raid the prep department of the Grammar School was burnt to a shell. As I was a timid little boy I was very scared at school and so was quite pleased, I'm afraid, that it was destroyed. Our class reassembled in the basement of a local theological college but the regime became far more relaxed. BGS only allowed two ladies on the staff to teach form 1; Miss Gass and Miss Merrieweather, anybody remember them?

Shortly after we went to Pilning about eight miles from Bristol and I went to the village school there.

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