大象传媒

During my time at school I was evacuated to Stoke for a very short period and went to another school there. There were two classrooms, one for children 5 to 11 and one for children 11 upwards and I went in the younger one. I just happened to be "teacher's pet". I remember one day the teacher took me out in her car after school and she showed me all around Stoke, lots of different places and then went shopping. My older sister who was only a year and four months older than me wasn't invited. The next day when we went to school she told everyone that I was "teacher's pet" and she was very jealous about it, but the other kids weren't they were interested to learn what I did and where I went. They seemed to be very happy that I went out and did some nice things. The house we were evacuated to was a massive big house and lots of people in our area were evacuated there. We were each given one room each where of course we had to do everything in it, but of course we had to go outside to the toilet. They would be horrible long bench things with holes in.

I then came back to Fairnox school in Barkingside. I loved my school days especially sport. I was very much into sport as I am today. I quite liked the shool meals, but of course there was never enough of it, but what we had was lovely such as steamed suet pudding, corned beef, swede, creamed potatoes and beetroot. My sister didn't like swede and in those days you were made to eat everything that was put in front of you and as my sister hated swede when the teacher wasn't looking I would eat the swede for her. I loved my food. In the school holidays, as we were very poor, we were given tickets to be able to go back to school at 11-o-clock for our milk and at lunchtime go back for our lunch and hand in one of these tickets. The school was always open, the dinner ladies were very nice.

I remember one Christmas, we had one grapefruit between 7 of us, we sat round this meagre open fire, we were well wrapped up, mum peeled and sectioned off the grapefruit and then shared it around. We had a bowl of sugar and we would each dip the grapefruit into the sugar. Mum would manage to get a rabbit or chicken for Christmas dinner and mum would make jam tarts for us as well. In the bottom of our stocking there would be a threepenny bit and perhaps the odd piece of chocolate and hair ribbon. I remember getting a china doll when I was 7 and I still have that doll today and I treasure that doll. Another year my father made us dolls clothes and a washing line with pegs to hang our dolls clothes up. He made a sewing box and I remember him working in the kitchen as there was no where else to work and he made an oblong box with a top and a bottom and then he would draw a line round it and saw right through it and I use to wonder why he use to do this because it was the top and the base and he lined it with felt. I treasure that box as well and I still have it today.

Just at the ending of the war, and because everything was on ration you could hardly get anything, clothes, shoes or anything like that, we had lots of hand-me-downs, and one day we were in the classroom and the Head Teacher came round and she had a great big jar of sweets and she was coming round to all the classrooms and was giving every child two sweets, we were allowed to eat one then, but the other one we had to take home and if we had a brother, or sister at home who hadn't had a sweet we had to promise to give it to them. We weren't allowed to have two.

Going back to rationing, clothing and things were so scarce, there was a lot of make and mend and my mother use to cut up her clothes to make things for us. Luckily she was very handy in that way. We had one suspender belt between the three of us! Mum had it most of the time, but if one of us was going out in the evening and needed it we would have it, but sometimes we would fight over it, but I think it was shared round pretty evenly at the end of the day. Lots of things were hand-me-downs, I even use to go to school in my brother's shoes. We were very poor. We even counted the peas on each other's plates, we were very hungry. Mum and Dad did their very best for us, but there wasn't that much food around. I didn't see a banana, I didn't even know what one looked like until I was 9, and then you were allowed one banana per ration book. We use to have to go back to the school once a week to pick up the allocated bottle of orange juice and tins of national dried milk powder for the younger ones and cod liver oil and all five of us kept very healthy. I got scarlet fever towards the end of the war and was in hospital for a time but we were mainly quite healthy.

When we were evacuated I remember I was quite frightened when we were staying at Stoke as I was frightened of the doodlebugs, us children use to call them "doodlebuggers" even though we were quite young. I remember one time seeing a doodlebug going over and it was all alight, it landed a few miles away. Also when we got home from being evacuated the houses up the road, there had been two blocks of houses, had been totally flatened, and lots of people killed, we didn't understand too much the implications of that, I know people had died, but being so young we didn't really understand and we even went and played on the rubble. One day interestingly enought we found a German Airman's helmet in our back garden, where it ever came from we never found out. I don't know what happened to it.

Our house was quite badly damaged with big cracks and windows blown in, but my dad being a builder and decorator had decorated the lounge and sorted things out for when we got home. My mother never liked the paper my dad had managed to get for the lounge, but a lot of the things he did round the house mum wasn't always keen on.

We had an air field not far away from us and I remember all different planes coming it to land there. I remember the search lights from the air field use to light up the night sky it was just amazing to watch. We had to have the blackout at night and if there was a hint of a light a Policeman or Air Raid Warden would come knocking on your door. Mum use to have thick blankets up at the windows so that it really was dark.

My father went out every night on his Air Raid duties, fire watching etc.

We had a big party in the street when the war was over, and I remember the big speech on the radio. There was a couple up the road who had a loud speaker and we had lots of records and things and we had that going. We were all dancing and singing, everybody was out in the street enjoying themselves. This was either on the day, or the day after the war ended. If I remember rightly there was double summertime then the clocks were put back for two hours so the nights were lighter and even longer.

I remember people coming round to our house asking us if we could lend them a cup of sugar until say the next week as everything was rationed. One lady, a friend of my mums, she was very short on meat, she had a large family, we didn't eat that much meat so my mother use to make me go to the butcher and get some meat and take it round to this lady. Everyone use to try and help out. If someone didn't need some of their sugar they would let someone else have it for some item that the other person had more of. We kept any cereal wrapping or cardboard, the cereal paper was used to wrap round the suet pudding for cooking. Nothing was thrown away there was a use found for everything.

My mother had a copper for washing our clothes in which was in the kitchen and she use to use a wash board which I still have in our garage. Bath night the copper use to be filled with buckets of water every Friday night and the youngest would go in first and then the next eldest and so on as five of us used the same water. When you were in the bath and one of the other children wanted to go to the loo they would have to pass through the kitchen, through the bathroom to the toilet at the back of the house.

We would always go into the Anderson shelter in our house every night for safety. I remember there was an elderly lady who lived near us who lived on her own, she would come round every evening for a cup of tea and a chat and she would often stay with us for the night, she was very frightened of being on her own. We just made her welcome.

My mother got hold of a parachute at one stage and when it was washed the parachute silk was beautiful and my mother made it into skirts or tops as we did ballet and tap dancing in those days she would make our outfits from this.

I remember going into Ilford one day with my mum and the siren went off and we all had to lie down on our tummies we were by Ilford railway station and we all had to lay on our tummies with our mouths open and had our hands over our ears. I never knew why we had to lay like that but everyone did at that time. I never thought to ask my mum why we laid like that.

Just as the war was ending and things were coming off the ration, we had a big stock of tea and sugar in our house, as we had always been so short of it I think mum and dad felt that we would never be short of it again.

I don't remember going to the pictures during the war but after the war we went to "Saturday morning pictures" that was 6p a time and as I was an ABC Monitor it didn't cost me anything to go in. I had to wear my Monitor's badge to be able to go in free. When we were in there you could get a piece of newspaper made into a cone filled up with broken ice cream waffers and they were a halfpenny a cone which we use to share.

I remember just after the war we would always go to East Ham Palace, which was a theatre, on Boxing day to see a show of some sort, and we had to get there by bus and it was a real treat.

There was very little traffic during and after the war, although I remember our next door neighbour had a car he use to drive the Mayor around in it and he always kept it bright and shiny and we all use to go out an look at it with our hands behind our backs as we were so frightened not to touch it or breath on it. We went through quite a long period of being frightened to touch other people's property. If you went into someone's house your hands would always be behind your back as we were taught not to touch other people's belongings as they were precious to them.

Another thing I remember is that on coming out of school one day all the children were running down to the far end of the driveway which ran between the infant, junior and senior girls and boys school so we all raced down there, we didn't know why, there were literally hundreds and hundreds of soldiers marching past. It was quite a sight.

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