大象传媒

My family and I lived in a rented house at 48 Wolesley Road, Crouch End, North London. Wolesley Road is the steeper part of what becomes Shepherds Hill which leads to Highgate Village. Our house was about halfway up the hill.

I was only four or five years old when we lived there but I have photographs of the large fish pond in the back garden into which I fell on a couple of occasions, once tied to a small chair during a game of 'Cops and Robbers'. I almost drowned on that occasion. I remember the bright white bubbles rushing past my face and the noise of the water, which seemed terribly loud. The photograph shows me with my brother and sister looking deep into the pond for the newts that Shirley used to sell for a penny.

I had no real awareness of a world at war around me. I was taken by my mother, safe and secure, to the nursery on Crouch Hill every day. I hated the obligatory lie down after lunch. It seemed to me a boring and endless waste of an hour. Mum would collect me when she finished work and walk me back home. Roger and Shirley were at St. Mary's School in Hornsey High Street and were old enough, just, to walk home on their own.

If there were very obvious signs of the conflict around me I can't say that I remember them. I don't recall taped window panes or sandbags although there must have been some to see. I only remember those small things that related to my own day to day existance, like the gas mask that I was no longer obliged to keep with me at all times.
Most of all I remember the substantial air raid shelter that had been built under the garage, because that was where we slept almost every night as the buzz-bombs came over. It was always daylight still when the dog bolted for the shelter door at the first sound of the sirens. In we would go, dog first, me second, Roger, Shirley, Mum and finally Aunt Peg, the brick of the family and thought to be very brave and plucky, though I have no idea why.

Sometimes Mum and Shirley would stay behind to shelter in the Morrison under the dining room table. This occurred when Shirley had an attack of the chronic asthma which was to kill her ten years later. The atmosphere in the shelter made breathing very difficult for her at times and so the two of them would sleep together in the cramped little steel cage.

The wail of the sirens was always very exciting for me. It meant that I could snuggle down with everyone in the shelter made cosy with camp beds and blamkets, hot flasks, and cakes of some kind or another.

Best of all were the Winnie the Pooh stories that Aunty Peggy used to read us. She had a gift for storytelling that brought the characters to life.
One night we were all tucked in with the primus stove boiling tea and the sirens outside still wailing their warnings. My mother, probably the most nervous of us, had told us about the doodlebugs that came over at night. 'They are quite safe, she used to say, 'Unless the engine stops.'

She never explained what would happen when the engine stopped and although Shirley and probably my brother Roger for that matter knew, I remained totally unaware of the significance. Of course I knew there was danger in the skies at night. Mother had allowed me to stand at the front door after the all clear to watch the flames sor into the sky from the burning of Wilson's Store at Crouch End broadway. I clearly remember the distant thumps and pops that sometimes continued right through to the dawn. Nothing strange about them. They were part of the night.

The whole thing got serious for me one night after being in the shelter for some hours. I knew this because Aunt Peggy was on to an Arthur Ransome story. Winnie the Pooh was designed to get me off to sleep but, although Roger and Shirley loved those stories as much as I, they needed something a little more grown up to get them to nod off!

I was lying on my side, my head resting on my hand, when a brittle rumble slowly made itself heard above Peggie's story. Once or twice in the past I had heard a similar sounds that always seemed far away and of no consequence. This time it got louder. As it impressed itself onto our consciousness I noticed Mother look hard at Peggy who, in spite of herself, faltered to a halt in her reading. The sound changed in its tone. It now resembled an unsilenced motorbike engine revved to an insane speed. Our air raid shelter must have been at least two foot thick. Substantial to say the least. In spite of this the roar was deafening.

And suddenly, silence. Absolute silence. Not a word was spoken. Mother still stared at each other, Shirley looked across the shelter at them both and my brother seemed to be asleep. For what seemed an endless time the silence continued and then, 'Duck!'
It was Roger that shouted, still with his eyes shut but with a gleeful grin on his face, radiant with excitment.

We all withdrew into ourselves a little, or so it seemed and then, with a wallop that shook the shelter, the V1 crashed onto a house in Coolhurst Road just a couple of hundred yards away.
The sound was tremendous. I remember a feeling of total blankness, unable to think, feel or reason. I was to experience a similar reaction after a bad car crash many years later. In the silence that followed the explosion Patch the dog whimpered and shook with fear. Shirley quickly calmed her and Peg, no doubt taking on the role of matriach, said,' Crumbs! That was close!'

We all laughed and relaxed. I didn't see the primus stove move but plucky Peg was there with a lightning hand to stop it tipping over. I learned that snippet during the excited inquest after the all clear when we told each other of our feelings and actions in that moment when the terror of war finally came home to me. Everyone had a small story to tell and I'm sure that one or two were made up just to keep me, as the youngest and most likely to be frightened, occupied.

Soon afterwards the all clear sounded and we left the shelter in the half light to return to our proper beds. As we stood by the kitchen door we could see the glow further up the hill where the bomb had struck. We were a lucky family.

Shortly afterwards my dad was invalided out of the RAF and secured a job as a game keeper on an estate in Yorkshire. From then on the only contact with the war were the occasional army manouvres in the woods next to the lodge where we lived. We spent the rest of the war and a couple of years extra on the Bingley Road, having the time of our lives. But that's another story.

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