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This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Dunstable At War Team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in Church Street, Dunstable and attended Ashton School. We had a very large garden backing onto Ashton School House and Mr Gs, a corn merchant in High Street North. We kept chickens and rabbits and went to Mr Gs for our bundles of straw which cost us 6 d. Those with cellars had to make them as safe as possible, so that’s were we sheltered. My gran, dad and uncle set up beds, food and other supplies just in case we had to shelter there for some time.

Gran used to go to the butchers in Church Street for offal to make Braun. On Saturdays we had bread with dripping and salt, a lovely tea. We had swimmers; little suet puddings dropped into hot pans of water and served with margarine and sugar. We ate such a lot fat in those days. We used to go wooding — we went to the fields to fetch wood to burn on the fire. We also collected nettles, poppy petals, dandelions, etc. We were only paid a ha’penny or a penny for collecting a huge sack of nettles but we had a great time!

My dad was in the air-force and was sent away to India. While he was there, Mum made us stand on a sheet of paper and drew around our feet. She then sent this paper pattern to my father who posted pairs of shoes back to us. Real leather with lovely designs!

A well loved person in Dunstable was Mr C. He had a second hand shop on the corner of Brittain Street. It was like an Aladdin’s cave where people went in hard times to sell their wares. Mr C was kind enough to take in almost everything. In fact, my dolls pram was sent there.

On Sundays I had to go into Priory Church at about one o’clock to collect a loaf of bread for my Gran. There were many loaves there but I never met anyone else collecting a loaf at the same time as myself. You can still see where the shelves were at the back of the church today.

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