大象传媒

I had my sixteenth birthday on December 5 1944. That summer I had taken my General Schools Certificate - School Cert. for short -the equivalent of today's GCSE. I went to Worthing High School for Girls, in West Sussex. World War Two was still on, and there were air raid shelters just outside the classrooms where we were doing our exams. A couple of times the sirens went. We had to troop out to the shelters - in complete silence in order to keep to exam rules. This wasn't easy, but we knew Worthing was not a military target; the enemy bombers overhead were probably saving their bombs for some other unfortunate town.

We were a lucky family. Having nobody on active service, we got no sad telegrams announcing death or injuries. My father, who was in his late forties, had served in the trenches in World War One. He was determined to join up again. By the time I was sixteen he had worked his way from the Home Guard to the Army, and was with MI6 in London. My mother was running a National Savings Group, selling sixpenny and half-crown savings stamps for the War effort. She also belonged to the Home Guard Nurses, in spite of her squeamishness about anything medical. Luckily the Home Guard never went into action, so she wasn't called upon to exercise her skills. I had no brothers or sisters, and was (disappointingly) not old enough to do anything exciting. My grandparents lived quite nearby. My mother and I used to go and visit them several times a week.

I had some good school friends and the War didn't stop us having fun. Worthing had several cinemas. We often spent one and ninepence (about 11p) to go and worship James Mason, Clark Gable, Margaret Lockwood, Betty Grable, Laurence Olivier and other heart-throbs. Sometimes we went to the Connaught Theatre, but that was a bit more expensive. My best friend and I were occasionally allowed to go to ballroom dancing classes, where we learned the Quickstep, the Waltz and the Slow Foxtrot, and sometimes even danced with boys. I didn't have a boyfriend. As I wore glasses I was convinced I never would. There were Church socials too but my parents insisted I had to be back by 9 o'clock because of the Blackout. It really was rather creepy with no street lights, dimmed car headlights (practically no cars anyway) and no lights showing through doors or curtains. Anyone who did show a light might be prosecuted, or even accused of signalling to the enemy. Although Worthing was a seaside resort, there was no question of going on the beach - it was protected from invaders by landmines, barbed wire and huge concrete blocks. Even the indoor swimming pool was closed - some said it was a munitions dump!

I never went hungry, but food was rationed and very limited. In spite of this we always had cooked breakfast. You could do wonders with dried egg - scrambled, omelette and fried `eggy bread'. You had to queue at most shops, and supplies often ran out before everyone could be served. We were lucky in Worthing to be able to buy luscious tomatoes straight from the commercial greenhouses. School dinners were truly awful, but we didn't often fail to clear our plates. I passed my School Cert, by the way.

The photo: films were almost unobtainable, and anyway we had no camera! The rounded white concrete structure on the left is one of the air raid shelters we had to troop into during our exams. Two years later, when I took Higher School Certificate (equivalent of A-Level) the War was over. However, the shelters were being demolished by the ball-and-chain method, so we still had disturbed exams.

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