大象传媒

I recall the second world war as hot summers,going into air raid shelters, sitting in school half asleep.we lived in a colliery house,the was in a row very close to Ryhope pit, we had no heating,or electric, no running water, cooking was done on a open coal stove,it had a large oven on one side,and a hot water boiler water was brought in by buckets from a stand pipe out in the street, the boiler was filled first then the buckets were filled again to stand for household use,coal was allso in by bucket, three were thrown on to the back of the fire on a shelf, it was raked forward when needed, then it was filled to stand for future use.
One night the sirens went it was a dash to the air raid shelter in winter it was cold it had no heating then we heard the drone of a German bomber, my Dad was standing in the door way he said looks like he is goinging for the pitthen we heard the whistle of the bombs dad juped back inside the explosion shook the shelter by thats close dad said, when we it was daylight we saw that the bombs had droped in the gardens up the top of the streetand blew the roofs off the houses in the top block, we were lucky.

Monday was washday ,my mother had a hand operated washer with a wringer attached to itit was hard work. she allso had a dinner to make depending on the shift my dad and two older brothers were in on wash day it was panackaldy when we came from school we had to be carefull not to touch the wasingthat was strung across the street, if a coal lorry or store cart came up or down the streetthe wives would dash out and lift the clothes props up to let them pass under,the co-op tried

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