大象传媒

In 1942 the hospitals in South Shields were ready for the invasion and expectant mothers were evacuated. My mother was evacuated to Gilsland in Cumbria to a large nursing home where she gave birth to me. It was staffed by Roman Catholic nuns and she was shocked that the priest ran a betting book on the horse races. I visited the place recently and it is now used as a holiday place for elderley people. The imposing house is set at the top of a hill overlooking a beautiful valley near to the Roman wall.
It was a long drive from the North East coast over the Pennines for my father in his Ford Popular car and because all the sign posts had been removed he got lost twice on his first trip to see me. We were taken home sooner than recommended because he didn,t like being alone at home.
In 1976 I was working as a teacher in Sussex and the head of the establishment was an ex nun who we discovered had actually been present as a nurse at my birth in Gilsland and remembered my mother as one who complained about the hospital policy not to allow flowers in the ward at night and never to allow red and white flowers to be in the same vase.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
When this pop group made a record that included the air raid siren I allways felt odd and fearful when I heard it on the radio. During 1942-45 we lived in South Shields and the docks were frequently targets for air raids. Talking to my mother about this she said that it was not surprising that my fears were revived because when the air raid siren went off she would agonise about which one of myself aged 1-2 years and my younger baby brother to take to the air raid shelter first. The shelter was dug into the earth at the end of the garden. She would have to put a gas mask on me and put my brother Alan into a baby gascase and could only carry one of us at a time down the garden to the shelter, leaving the other alone in the house. While I would be calm in the house, my brother would scream at being put into the gascase and she would hear his cries as she carried me down the garden and then I would cry at being left alone in the air raid shelter.
Luckily our house was not hit but others around us were. She remembered very vividly going to my father's Fish shop in George Potts Street one morning after an air raid. The whole of the front of a house had been blown away and most of the rooms were rubble but on the second floor an old man she knew could be seen from the street, sitting dead in his rocking chair as if he had just snoozed off. The building was unsafe but some men climbed up to get his body down before the demolition gang began their work.
I still feel odd if I hear an air raid siren although I have no conscious memory of this time.

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