大象传媒

I was born in 1937 and the family moved to Sidcup, twelve miles south of London, soon after to take over a dairy and grocers鈥� shop. The house was quite old and consisted of three floors and a cellar where the stock for the shop was stored. The shop opened onto the side road with a small window. Little flights of steps ran up and down between rooms on all floors. I wasn鈥檛 really allowed in the shop when it was open but it was very exciting to watch from the door. (photograph of house with shop)

My first real memory of the war was standing in the road outside the shop with my mother, watching the Battle of Britain going on overhead. Mother counted the enemy planes shot down as they fell. A big change was having a Morrison shelter in the kitchen instead of the table. It was like a huge metal box with mesh sides where we used to sit for meals. I had to get under the shelter during an air-raid and mother brought any children in the shop to join me. (photograph with parents)

The bombing started in earnest when I was three and I was sent to a farm in Hereford with an aunt, Leila, who had looked after me when I was little. It was a lovely place to stay with all the animals and a dog called Sally who went everywhere with me. (photo of sitting on woodpile with Sally)
There were no bombs here and it was one long playtime 鈥� food was plentiful, milk, cream, butter, eggs, chickens all home produced. The local village was prone to flooding and I remember that the pavements were built high above the road with steps up and down to cross the road which seemed about three foot high.

After a year my aunt took me back to Sidcup but incendiary bombs fell all round us that night and whole streets were blazing so we were off again next morning to Norfolk to stay on Aunt Isabel and uncle Roger鈥檚 farm. My brother, who was eleven stayed in Sidcup throughout the war.

I remember this time with great happiness. The farm was 1000 acres of arable and livestock with a large work-force of men and women (nowadays it would probably be worked by one man) Everything was bustle and excitement. Every morning the yard was full of people and horses setting off to work and the cowmen busy in the barns. The large house was full as well, with my two cousins, farm students and a family of Danish refugees who kept to themselves. There were two women working in the house, always busy with cooking, jamming and bottling fruit. I was allowed to help take food to the chickens and collect the eggs. A lovely job was turning the eggs in the incubator and hearing the continuous twittering of the tiny yellow chicks. I enjoyed going with Aunt Leila to see the calves in the looseboxes or stand in the cowshed watching the milking. It was warm and dim in there with a sour, milky smell. The big stud bulls were scary but I had to visit them every day to show how brave I was. I did learn to milk cows but not at the beginning.
(photograph with Uncle Roger pushing milk churn)

We took eggs and mushrooms to sell in the market and had big parties to pick blackberries and harvest apples and pears. Part of the farm was a semi-wild garden, which was all that remained of a large manor house which had been pulled down. We often took picnics up there and played in the stables and carriage house. Aunt and I used to pick snowdrops, primroses and sweet violets in the gardens, wrap them up in damp cotton wool and post them to my mother and all the other aunts and cousins round the country. I had very pretty postcards from mother thanking us. Food was plentiful on the farm although we were short of tea and other rations. My aunt Isabel gave up our bacon ration so that they could kill a pig every year to give us hams, bacon and lard . I loved helping to make brawn and sausages 鈥� I am still searching for sausages and bacon, which taste like those! Farmworkers were given extra rations during busy times like harvest, haymaking and sugarbeet lifting and I was allowed to help Aunt divide the stores into boxes for each family. A clever part of rationing was the 鈥減oints鈥� allocation, which could be used for a wide variety of scarce foods such as cocoa, biscuits, rice, flour and tinned food. There was a campaign to 鈥渄ig for victory鈥� and all the children had a little patch. (Photo with hoe) We called ourselves the 鈥淕arden League鈥� and kept the records in a Glucodin tin because it had GL on the side. I can鈥檛 remember anything being harvested.

That was the best Christmas of my life. The Aunties were from a family of twelve and welcomed everybody. Rich, plentiful food with pheasant and hare to supplement rations and clotted cream which Aunt Isabel made in a wide bowl over a paraffin stove. No cream you can buy today is as good because it doesn鈥檛 taste of paraffin.

This happy time ended when I reached 5 in 1942 and had to go back to Sidcup to start school. I had been away with Aunt Leila for nearly three years and hardly knew my family. Time had stopped for them too and they called me 鈥渂aby,鈥� very demeaning for an independent five-year-old. I had bonded with Aunt who now lived half a mile away with grandpa and I was always asking to go and see her, which didn鈥檛 go down very well at home. They said she had spoilt me, which was quite true.

There had been the odd bomb in Norfolk but Sidcup was like a town under siege. Windows that were not broken and boarded-up were criss-crossed with brown sticky paper to prevent glass flying in the blast. I had to carry my Mickey Mouse gas mask everywhere. I started at Sidcup Hill school in September 1942. Every morning the whole school sat on the floor in the hall and recited the times tables and a rather strange one that went 12 pence, one shilling, 20 pence one and eight, 24 pence two shillings, right up to 240 pence, one pound. said in a sing-song voice. Really the older pupils carried the younger until they learnt themselves. It still remains totally automatic. I had one really good friend at school called Sheila and we tried to do everything together. We used slates and squeaky pencils because there was a shortage of paper. Crayons were made of unvarnished wood and came in only four colours, dark blue, dark green, red and yellow. I had an orange and a turquoise crayon, saved from pre-war days which I treasured and kept until the end of the war when they were only one inch long. There was no uniform as clothing coupons had to be used for all garments and we wore a real mix of hand-me-downs. The worst thing was a pair of leather gaiters with 30 buttons down each side which had to be fastened with a buttonhook. I never walked home with my friends because I was still sat at my desk fastening these gaiters when they were all long gone.

Everyone was very brave and cheerful. Cousins on leave from the forces came to stay and gave us a good time. (photo with cousin) Hoardings gave patriotic slogans such as 鈥淐areless talk costs lives鈥� and 鈥淒on鈥檛 be a squanderbug鈥�. One that really confused me said 鈥淯se shank鈥檚 pony鈥� and showed a family walking down a road. The blackout was complete and it was a disgrace to show any light. If you went out at night you took a torch which had to be shielded and pointed down. If you drove, the headlights had to be dimmed and it must have been quite hair-raising but in any case, petrol was rationed and few people had any. This England- fervour was so strong that I threw away a small doll because it had 鈥渇oreign鈥� stamped on the back. I remember I felt quite ill when I saw it.
Air raids happened every night and we had to get up and sit in the shelter. The adults used to make jokes about God shifting the furniture in heaven 鈥� we didn鈥檛 believe it but it raised our spirits. Aunt Margery refused to get out of bed at all. My brother used to take me out hunting for shrapnel. A piece with brass in it was highly prized and when we had a big bag full we handed it in at the police station. He even melted down his toy soldiers for the war effort. One day a woman who had been bombed out the night before came into the shop in just her nightie and Wellington boots. Mother found her a mac and some blankets but everyone was running short of supplies.

We used to unpick knitted clothes to make into new garments and I was in great demand for re-winding the wool. Mens鈥� trousers could not be made with turn-ups because they used more material and women鈥檚 dresses had quite short skirts. We used to sing round the piano in the evenings and listen to the radio. ITMA was very popular because it thumbed its nose at the enemy.

Then the V1s started, pilotless planes that cut out the motor after a certain distance and bombed the place below. You started to count when the noise stopped and if you hadn鈥檛 been hit by the time you got to 10 you were safe again and someone else had bought it. These 鈥渄oodlebugs flew in the day as well, as they had no crew to lose and we spent a fair bit of time in the shelters at school. Long after the war a friend moved to London from the north. He had had no experience of the blitz and was quite taken with the shelter in his flat in South London and suggested that we go and stay there and he would throw things about upstairs so we could experience what the bombing was like. I went ballistic! Until that moment I hadn鈥檛 realised how it had affected me. Even today an air-raid siren in a war film makes my stomach lurch 鈥� it鈥檚 funny that they never sound the 鈥渁ll clear.鈥�

Then the V2 rockets started and there was talk of evacuating the children. My mother took me up to Lancashire to stay with another Aunt, Alice and Uncle James. They had lost both their sons, one on the Ark Royal and the younger just before I landed on them. Their two daughters were ten years older than me and their life-style was strictly non-conformist, north country, quite different from my rather rackety family and I was a fish out of water, again. It was so good of them to take me in and I did appreciate their kindness as I got older. Mother took me up on the train which was cold, dark, smelly and crowded. We had paste sandwiches and tea with milk in a Heinz salad cream jar. I remember asking her constantly if we were safe yet. She only stayed one night and went back to Sidcup the next day and I felt betrayed especially as my brother stayed in London to complete his schooling. She told me Winston wanted people to stay in London and work for victory but it wasn鈥檛 logical that I was the only one to go away. One night a stray V1 fell nearby and I was out of bed saying 鈥渢hey鈥檝e come to get us鈥� - nobody else recognised the sound.

After I had been there a week I was playing in the street when a bus drew up and a crowd of evacuees were put down with their little suitcases and luggage labels in their buttonholes and their was my friend Sheila from Sidcup and her brother Alan. They were billeted on my cousin鈥檚 friends mother and lived a quarter of a mile away. Both families welcomed us into each other鈥檚 houses and we spent the rest of the war together in Besses o鈥檛h Barn. The local council school was very strict but it taught us well as I was put in a class two years above my age when I moved again.

I remember the food in the war with great pleasure. The farms were well supplied of course but Aunt Alice refused to accept anything from the black market and still produced tasty food. She made my uncle return food given to him once because she suspected it was not legal. Uncle did have an allotment, which supplied fruit and vegetables with a hen coop where we kept six hens, five brown and one white called Alice. You had to give up your egg ration (one a week) in exchange for poultry-meal and a little grain but it was well worth it 鈥� two or three eggs a day. The hens got potato peel and other vegetable parings boiled up with the meal and it stank! The dried egg you could have with the rations was mainly used for cakes. Scrambled dried eggs were flat and leathery and totally artificial.


The meat ration came as money-value so you got a lot more meat if you used cheap cuts. Aunt Alice made wonderful stews with scrag neck of lamb and shin beef. I particularly enjoyed a meatless meal of boiled onions with cheese sauce served with mash. Fish was not rationed and we often had fish pie or grilled plaice. Kidneys were classed as offal and very tasty. I suppose hunger was the best appetiser. We saved every drop of meat fat to make dripping, which was delicious on brown bread or used for cooking. One of the greatest sins was to leave food on your plate. Eating up the fat gave you bonus points - I think this is why I still prefer meat with fat on it. We did not have sugar in tea as it was saved for baking. Food was squirrelled away for Christmas to make special meals, a joint of some kind was important and one year there was a panic because there seemed to be no hope of a roast and then the lodger brought us a goose from his parents鈥� farm and someone who kept poultry gave us TWO chickens 鈥� a feast! I never saw a banana until after the war when children got one banana a week on ration.

In March 1945 the other evacuees went back to Sidcup as the bombing had more or less stopped. I was going too and then one more bomb fell near the house and my parents said I should wait one more week. During that week a V2 rocket fell nearby, killing Aunt Margery and fatally wounding my mother. Father, unscathed, was blown into the garden in his bed and my brother was hurt. The war ended soon after and we had a bonfire with flares. I never saw Sheila again.

I stayed on in Lancashire until the summer holidays and then joined my father in Aunt Leila鈥檚 house in Sidcup. I was sent to boarding school because my father was ill with Tuberculosis and he died the next March. My Aunt and Uncle in Lancashire became my guardians and I spent the summer holidays on the farm in Norfolk.

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