大象传媒

With Charlie behind bars with his rowdy Blackshirt mates in Brixton prison (see: A3446228 - Dad as a Blackshirt ), Angela was left to fend for herself. On the night of 7th September 1940, there was a very heavy air raid which marked a turning point in German bombing policy. Mum and I took shelter in a coal cellar under a friends' shop in Woodgrange Road where she went into labour.

We were quite alone, although the midwife had been called. She delivered my sister Erica herself. Next morning I climbed up the steps to let in the midwife. Outside was a scene of great destruction with the streets littered with rubble and flooded from the broken water mains.

Some time afterwards, a family friend --Mr Varran who was later killed as an air raid warden-- put me on the crossbar of his bike and took me round to Belgrave Road to have a look at our house. It was a mess! A land mine had flattened a house nearly opposite and the blast had gone through ours scouring our precious furniture with tiny particles of glass. Also gone was the aquarium and its fishes.

I was under strict orders not to say anything to Mum but 4-year olds can never keep a secret, so my first words when we returned were: 鈥淢ummy, you should see our house!鈥�.

My next recollections are of a large country estate in Yorkshire, in heavy snow, where we were evacuated with another Eastender and her boy. The lady who had to take us in had great difficulty in adjusting to two little monsters from London, particularly when her grandfather clock crashed forward with me inside it.

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