大象传媒

Between 1940 / 41, I was evacuated form Heaton to Bellingham in Northumberland. There was a camp there built specially for evacuees. As a matter of fact it is still there. We slept in the rows of wooden huts and there was an ablutions block for us to wash in. When we went out, we walked in a crocodile.

Back in Newcastle, aged 14, I took the exams for the Northern Commercial College off Claremont Road. Despite coming top in Maths and English I did not get a scholarship as I was bottom in general knowledge. Being in Bellingham with no access to newspapers or the wireless meant we had no idea of events.

I remember a tunnel running form Exhibition Park up Claremont road and we used this as an air raid shelter.

When the fair came to the Town Moor at the end of June I went with my friend Lilian. I remember watching a lady acrobat who climbed a high pole. She performed handstands on the top and for the climax of her act produced a compact with a mirror supposedly to powder her nose. Later, we heard that this was not a compact but a camera and the lady was in fact a spy photographing the shipyards and Vickers from her high vantage point. No one else I know remembers this. My friend went to South Africa after the war and we lost touch. People do not believe me and have gone so far as to say I am making it up, but it is clear in my mind. I would love to know if anyone else remembers these rumours about the lady up the pole.

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