大象传媒

RYE LANE PECKHAM
It was 1940 I was now 14 years old and I had to seek a job, as there was not much about in peckham I ventured further afield, taking a job at the Rivoli cinema in Crofton park, just up the road from Brockley.
I travelled by train to & from this site, the station at Crofton Park was just across the road from the cinema, but the peckham end entailed some fifteen minutes walk to my home.
I managed to get away a little earlier in the evenings, but it was usually after 10 pm when I arrived at Rye Lane Station, travelling on the trains in wartime Britain was a little scary, no lights in the carriages, and the landscape so open , every flash could be seen over a wide area, I would walk down Rye Lane often there would be an air raid in progress, and many times I layed in the gutter or dived in to a shop doorway as bombs screamed down, my route home took me down the Lane, across the high street, into hill street and finally in to furley road, I would make my way through my house to the Andersen shelter in the garden, where my mum and my sister Rose would be, somehow mum always managed to get me something hot to eat and drink, there were just the three of us Dad had died way back in 1931 and mum had taken such good care of us since then, and in these troubled times it was now a real hard challenge for her.
Strange how people managed to adapt to such conditions brought on by the war and the rationing, so unreal at times.
People were kinder and closer to each other than ever before, and it was this spirit that pulled us through those very difficult times, as I have said before, unless you lived under such conditions, you cannot comprehend the way we were.
Ted Dann.

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