大象传媒

This is one of the stories collected on the 25th October 2003 at the CSV's Make a Difference Day held at 大象传媒 Manchester. The story was typed and entered on to the site by a CSV volunteer with kind permission of Joanne Dorrington.

How will Father Christmas find us?

My earliest memory of the war is from before Christmas 1940 when we were bombed out.
I was at home with my mother, father, my younger sister and a friend who was staying with us as she was working nights. My father was in the home guard but was at home ill with pneumonia, so we were not in the shelter in the garden as it was too cold. The bombers came over and bombed a row of houses on Davyhulme Road. The top of our house came in, we didn鈥檛 get hurt as we were hiding under the dining room table, the table was three inches thick.
We couldn鈥檛 get out as the rubble had come down and blocked the door. Finally people came and dug us out. I remember that my biggest worry was how would Father Christmas find us!
We stayed with friend s from Flixton over Christmas, then we rented a house in Urmston eventually and stayed there, well, forever really.

At one point, before we were bombed out, we were evacuated the Knutsford. It was such an awful place we soon came home. It was a big country house in its own grounds, we went there with the same friend from Flixton with her two daughters and my mother myself and my sister were evacuated there. We lived in what was originally the wash house, it was freezing, no heating and when you went in the garden the gardeners wouldn鈥檛 let you on the grass, but it was the cold really that was the reason we went back.
I can鈥檛 remember how long we were there, it was at least a few weeks, but it was horrible, so we went home in time to be bombed out!

We had an Anderson shelter in the garden, I remember them digging a big hole and wondering what they were doing. They then put the shelter over the top, you had to go down some steps to get in. It was just earth inside, it was freezing. I can remember there being ice on the floor.

There was a nursery behind us that used to keep pigs and a goat and they grew their own vegetables. You couldn鈥檛 throw anything away, all the waste food went to feed the pig. Food was very boring as I remember, we would have meat on a Sunday and a hot pot on the Monday with any scraggy bits that were left over, Tuesday was always egg and chips.
I remember eating a lot of chips and spam. One time I was shopping with my mother and I saw a lady I knew queuing at a shop for oranges, so I joined the queue and got an orange and took it home and we all shared it. It was the first time I had had an orange. I can remember making fruit cake for Christmas with some kind of oil, I can鈥檛 remember what, but we couldn鈥檛 get hold of any fat.

I didn鈥檛 have any relatives that went to war, not that I know of anyway. My dad was on a reserved occupation as he worked in munitions, so he stayed at home and was in the home guard. My mum worked at Ford鈥檚 in Trafford Park again in munitions. We had a friend called Ted, he went to war. His wife had twin sons while he was in Africa so he got compassionate leave to see his sons.

On VE day I remember that my mum and dad took us to a bonfire and to see some fireworks, everyone seemed to have a smile on their face, no one had been smiling very much, everyone was worried and had people abroad and in dangerous places.

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