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I mind the bombs coming over tae bomb Glesca (Glasgow). We used to stand in the garden and see the bombs going across, when they tried to blow the bridge. We didn’t feel anything, we just watched it. I was at the hospital at the time too, I’d just had a baby at the time. My husband was a surveyor in the pit, so he wasn’t called up. The pit was in Dysart, and sometimes he was in Kirkcaldy.

I used to go to the grocers and when anything went in I would ask for a wee bit extra — same with the cigarettes. Used to bake a lot of apples and pears. We lived in a tenement, so we didn’t have room in the garden for much, but we had plenty potatoes. I didn’t find rationing too difficult — it’s not what you know it’s who you know. We always had enough.

We had silent pictures in these days. Father used to like the pictures, and then we used to go to dances. The Scouts and Guides always used to go together to the dances…Glenn Miller and people like that. I used to jive, every Saturday night. We used to get out of work and just hurry up and get a bus and go into Kirkcaldy and go to the Palais. There were always two or three of us, and we danced with the locals. Because they were in the pit, they weren’t called up.

I mind Charlie Chaplain films. I mind Bing Crosby, he was a favourite, and also Alan somebody. I liked musicals, they kept your spirits up. I liked the radio too — the people across the road used to go on about radios and things, but when we got one, she was the first to come over the road to listen to it.

We had an air raid shelter, it was out in the garden, an Anderson shelter. We just had an old seat in it, but nothing else. We just grabbed what we could and went in there. You used to sing and things, just old songs.

I was in the hospital when the war ended — I was having my first boy, in Kirkcaldy hospital.

(Collected by SBC Museums)

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