大象传媒

It was doodlebug time. How dreadfully frightening it must have been for mothers in London, left to look after their children while their husbands were away, somewhere, fighting the war.

And so it was that I found myself, just five years old, holding my mother's hand in Stoke Newington High Street, just down from Stoke Newington Railway Station, outside Vale's (private) Library. We had stopped when my mother met a woman she knew. I heard the friend say something about Stoke Newington School in Church Street. It was where 'they' were aranging evacuation - whatever that meant. Within five minutes we were at the school...

I remember being dressed up in my raincoat with a luggage label bearing my name attached to the lapel , and a 'Mickey Mouse' gas mask round my neck. We were waiting to get on the train, bound for Blackpool - although I don't think I even knew that at the time, and certainly I had no idea at all where it was - and I doubt my mother knew that much about it either, as she had hardly been out of London all her life.

After the train journey came the bus. All I can recall is that all the other kids had got off, leaving just me and my ten-year-old sister Leila with the person in charge. It was getting dark, and the woman must have been getting anxious. As the bus moved on a bit, she got out and knocked on a door. After a brief conversation she was back in the bus and off we went another short distance to another house...and another...and another... It would have been typical of my mother if the last thing she had said to Leila was not to let me out of her sight, but who would take in TWO young children, especially of different sexes and five years apart in age? Not many, it was clear. But eventually we found a childless couple who were willing to take on the challenge!

It seems impossible now to comprehend that process. A young loving mother, separated from her husband by war, putting her two young children on a train to an unfamiliar town hundreds of miles away, to be looked after (she prayed!) - and in reality brought up - by strangers, for ... who knew how long.... It's incomprehensible by today's standards, where parents don't seem to be able to let their kids out of their sights.

By all subsequent accounts, we were lucky. We were indeed looked after, and even loved. I have a clear memory of lots of tears as we finally left to go back home to London.

It's curious how one remembers little cameos of life so far back in one's memory. I recall the house number was 60 - the same as that of the house in which we rented accomodation in London. The couple we stayed with were entertainers by profession - one was a singer and the other played the piano, but I can't recall which was which! The mother of one of them lived with there too, and she certainly became my 'Grandma' for the time we were there. I was a bit frightened of their dog, which I think was called Bruce.

The first days at the local school were horrendous. I had only just started school in London - more of that in another story - but at least there I was with friends. Here in Blackpool I knew no-one, and for the first time in my life I regarded myself as an outsider, not least of the reasons being that I seemed to be the only Jewish person in the class. Boys and girls were segregated even at play-time - I remember my sister and I standing either side of a huge wire fence in the separate playgrounds, crying our eyes out!

But evidently we got by, and soon began to do the things that all children do...like chalking on a wall on the way home, for which my sister got a roasting from our hosts when she was reported by a neighbour. That was the first time I came across the word 'sulk' - an activity at which my sister was particularly good but which was a no-no in our hosts' house!

Then there were the times we watched flying boats sweeping along the beaches; collecting shells - never seen by either of us before; my first experience of being stung by a wasp, and the blue paper remedy....

My mother came up to see us on occasional weekends. It must have been dreadful for her. Travel (by train, of course) was not easy in those days, and how she could afford it I don't know. And how heartbreaking to have to go back to the London bombings, leaving your children behind. I know that this experience was repeated thousands of times across the country, but that doesn't in any way lessen it's deep impact on me.

I don't know how long we were there in Blackpool, but it must have been some months. When it finally came to leave, my sister and I went to buy my mother a gift. Where else to go but to Woolworths; but what to buy? For whatever reason I do not know, but we eventually decided we could afford....a wooden rolling pin! No doubt this caused great amusement, tempered to be sure by a wish not to offend us. WE thought it was a good idea, anyway!

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