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"Im a pupil from Prudhoe community High School, Northumberland, entering Shirly Chapman's story onto the website, and they fully uderstand the website terms and conditions of use".
At the begining of the war I was ill for 18 months, with some form of the measles, so my memories are some what distorted with being ill for so long. I was very young when the war began only about 5 I think, I also had a baby sister who was about 6 months old when it started. My farther died just before the war from some kind of illness that could easily be cured these days. I remember that right at the begining of the war my mother went back to teaching parly because my farther had died and we needed the money, and party for the war effort.
Almost as soon as the war began my sister and I began to spend alot of time at our Grand parent's house. My grand dad was the chief of a large engineering buisness, and he built a large, very sturdy brick air raid shelter in their back garden. It was quite large and my sister and I spent countless nights sleeping in there with my granparents, in fact we ended up spending a lot of time in there. I didnt understand whywe were there and not at home, but I wasn't even aware that the war was happening.
For the times that we werent at our Grandparents house my mother got us an "Anderson Shelter", which was basically like a big metal table, I don't know what good it would have done if a bomb had been dropped but my mother, sister and I slept under there almost every night. On top of this my grand dad put up wooden shutters on all of our windows, I think that this was because they were afraid of flying glass if a bomb was ever dropped nearby. Most of the houses around mine were also taking similar precautions, even though we hardly got bombed at all compared with London or Bristol.
Despite the war we didn't go hungry, we may have lived without luxeries and the food that we did have was much simpler than it is now a days, I didn't really notice the change we just started eating less, this was probably because of the rations. Many things were in short supply during this time though like eggs. One of the wierdest things that we children had to eat was scrambled eggs made with dried pre-packaged eggs in stead of the real ones. We didn't go hungry though as we mostlylived in the country in a small village and there everyone grew things and then traded them in for other things so you could always barter for vegetables with the vegetables that we had. Another thing that I remember is going potatoe picking in the fields around where we lived, with the other local children from my school, we picked loads and then sent them off to bomed out areas and areas that had little food other than the rations.
In about the middle of the war my sister and I went to stay with two aunts who lived together on the other side of the country. At some point during our stay there we were outside playing in the sunshine and one of my Aunties remarked to her sister that the planes that she could see were "having a dog fight", I looed up at that point and I could see very far away a lot of planes fighting. At the time I didn't know what the remark meant but now I realise that the spitfires and the German planes must have been fighting. Other than that comment though I didn't hear one single adult talk about the war in front of us children.
A popular passtime with the boys was to cycle up and over the hill near where I lived and into the woods where a plane had crashed and they often took pieces of unexploded bombs and pieces of the plane itself. I think that they were trying to make their own tiny bombs and planes.
Another thing that happened during the war that wouldn't happen now was the fact that when I won a scholarship to the local high school my Grandma made all of my blouses out of reject parachute silk when it came out on the market just before the end of the war. The highschool for a time during the war and just after the school was shared by a group of girls from London whose school was unavailable at the moment, we had the morning lessons and they had the afternoon lessons this was so that we could both get an education even though we had to share.
I know that the war was terrible for those on the front line but for us in England us children it didn't seem terrible at all!

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