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Sometimes Mum took me for walks to play in Alexandra Park and Christchurch Park. It was in Alexandra Park where we had our neighbourhood Victory Party in 1945 and Mum dressed me in red, white and blue. About that time I had my first visit to Felixstowe which had been out of bounds in the War. There were stone bulwarks and barbed wire on the beach and I was fascinated by the vast expanse of the sea beyond.

I also remember Ipswich Station in the War and seeing a train full of soldiers. The steam which suddenly shot out from an engine with a vast noise terrified me.

Other memories are the crib in St.Pancras Church at Christmas time with an angel which noddied its head if you put money in the box. Nanny played the organ for the 9.30 am Mass on Sunday and I remember being up in the choir loft with her and finding the next hymn number in the book when she had finished playing the previous one. (Incidentally, I now play the hymns at the 9.30 am Sunday Mass at St Pancras Church).

My other grandma and grandad lived in London in a little cul-de-sac off Paddington Green W2. I remember Mum taking me to visit them and seeing lots of bombed buildings.

Back in Ipswich, I remember the 'bull' which used to go off to let the men know when their next shift started at a factory and I remember Turner's munitions factory on Foxhall Rd. because a friend of the family called Phyllis worked there.

Meanwhile, I loved my books. I loved 'Copycat': a supurb moral tale about being content with what you have, and 'The Water Babies' with its lovely pictures. I remember learning to write the letter E and thinking it could have any amount of horizontal lines! There was Mrs. Jolly's sweet shop in Crown Street. where I was allowed a triangular paper bag with Smarties in it. Why were the counters so high! It was the same in Woolworth's.

My auntie was a jolly soul who loved to deliberately mispronounce words. It took me a long time to realise that 'burglars' were not 'burgulars'!

Eventually Dad came home and we settled down as a family in Surbiton Rd., I having started school at St.Mary's in Woodbridge Rd. in September 1945. In due course four more children were born but I always felt the one apart and they teasingly said I had three parents.

One thing that people who have always had a Mum and Dad and siblings not too far apart in age may not understand is that for a child like me who only knew a household of Mum, Granny and Auntie, a family just meant any relations and I think it was in my teens before I realised that a family is meant to be a mum, dad and their children. Whatever circumstances into which one is born, one just accepts that as the norm and for us little ones of 1940 and slightly before and slightly after, whose first conscious moments were of wartime Britian, that was the norm.

Sadly I did not accept my father when he came home although Mum had done her best to tell me about my dad when he was away. Now, in 2004, sixteen years after his death, I feel very proud of him and I am pleased that I have lots of his traits in me, such as a love of music and the Latin Tridentine Mass in the Catholic Church and all the tradition that goes with it.

It has occurred to me that I am among the last people who will be left to remember the Second World War. If I see my 90th birthday in 2030, for instance, only very few of the wartime adults and older children, will be left by then.

In spite of the obvious disadvantages of being a war-baby, I am very proud that I started life in the War and have child's memories of it and that I am one of those who 'did my bit' for the War, mainly in being deprived of my father and normal family life, along with many other little children who were born around the same time as I.

Reproduced by Ipswich Museum with Miss Cleary's premission.

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