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Having been born 18 months before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, for me as a young child war was the norm.

I vaguely knew, from what I was told, that 'before the war', whatever and whenever that was, sweets were available in unlimited quantities and varieties and that all sorts of free goodies were given away with breakfast cereals and other groceries.

Foreign fruits like bananas, oranges and peaches were the stuff of dreams; all I knew of bananas was the plaster bunch on the back wall of the greengrocer's shop in Abbey Wood, London, near where my grandmother lived.

Of my first home, in Welling, Kent, I have no recollection. The first home I remember was 12 Barnet Close, on the northern edge of Yeovil in Somerset, where we moved to be near my father, who was stationed nearby. My earliest identifiable memory appears to be from April 1942, when my mother and I travelled to Ayr, where my father was stationed at the time awaiting a posting overseas, to stay for a few days. All this memory consists of is of a railway station late at night.

The life my friends and I lived at Yeovil is unimaginable for today's children. Weather permitting, we played outside. We had little in the way of toys, and what there were must have been largely hand-me-downs from before the war. There was nothing new available. The roads, in this outer area of the town at least, were perfectly safe. Traffic was almost non-existent.

But we were not confined to the road outside our homes. Two or three minutes walk brought us to the end of the built-up area. Across a farm track were endless fields, in which we had complete freedom to play. The meadows were filled with flowers, as well as cow pats. Our play consisted of anything from making daisy chains to catching tadpoles and fish in a nearby pond. We even skated on the pond, in our wellies, when it was frozen, and often fell through the ice. But no one seemed to worry about us getting into any sort of trouble.

Having a young child to look after, my mother was exempt from the otherwise compulsory war work, which in Yeovil would probably have consisted of working at the Westland Aircraft works in the town. We had evacuees staying with us at some time, but I can remember nothing of them.

The house was a standard design semi; front room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms and a box room. We lived largely in the dining room, at the back. It was furnished with a table and chairs two leatherette covered wood framed fireside chairs and a bureau. There were probably other things, but nothing I can recall. My main memory of this room is listening to the news on the radio, which seemed to consist mainly of accounts of bombing raids on Germany and the number of aircraft which did not return.

My bedroom was also at the back. Again, although there must have been more, the only furniture I can remember is the bed and my bamboo bedside table, which I still have. I spent a lot of time in this room, since I suffered frequently from bronchitis. My abiding memory of it, though, is that it was freezing cold in the winter, with frost inside the windows and icy linoleum on the floor.
In the small box room, above the front door, lived, amongst other things, was my father's racing bike, upside down to preserve its orange rubber tyres. I played with this a lot, whizzing its wheels round by turning the pedals, and rattling things in the spokes.

The garden I remember little about, except for the fact that there were strawberry plants and that it backed onto a large open space, half allotments half grass. The adjoining house kept chickens, as did many people in those days. Occasionally a butcher would come to kill some, although whether this was for home use or for him to sell I do not know. Sometimes he wrung their necks, and other times he chopped off their heads on a block. I can still remember the awful stench of potato peelings being boiled to feed these birds.

My mother and I used to go for long walks along the deserted lanes, especially in the autumn when the hedgerows were filled with blackberries and hazelnuts, uncontaminated with exhaust fumes.

Frequently we would travel to London, including Darkie, our black spaniel, to visit my maternal grandmother in Abbey Wood. Yeovil Town station was linked to the main line by a short branch line. I loved standing on the platform at Yeovil Junction watching the monstrous steam engines huffing and puffing as they strained to start their long trains of carriages or wagons, often with their wheels desperately skidding as they tried to get a grip on slippery rails.

The trains to London, coming up from further west, were pulled by square sided Merchant Navy and Battle of Britain Class locomotives. They were probably very crowded, although I think we always got a seat. These journeys were magical, with the hurried puffing sound from up ahead, steam and smoke pouring past the window and the line-side telegraph wires rising and falling between their poles. At that time, too, large advertising hoardings seemed to be in every field, extolling the virtues of cider and Guinness.

At Waterloo we would cross the pedestrian bridge to the east side of the station, to catch an electric train to Abbey Wood. These were characterised, for me, by the rhythmic sound of their compressors and the sight and sound of the wheel tapper walking between the electrified tracks hitting each wheel in turn with his hammer to check for defects.

My grandmother's house, 15 Congress Road, was in a Victorian terrace. It was furnished, not surprisingly, in a heavy Victorian way. The front parlour, its door rarely opened, was darkened by heavy net curtains and was inhabited by the customary foliage plants. Living was done in the back room, with its tiled iron fireplace. The mantle shelf was fringed, and full of all sorts of ornaments. The only furniture I clearly remember was the large sideboard, with knick-knack laden shelves and a mirrored back. It also supported a columned clock.

The house had no electricity. It was lit by gas lights on the wall, with their fragile mantles which needed frequent replacement. The 'Utility' radio was powered by a lead acid battery, called an accumulator. It had a handle on the top and had to be taken to a shop to be recharged. Baths were taken in front of the fire, in a galvanised bath which at other times hung on a wall outside. There was no hot running water, and I believe that water for baths was heated in the clothes boiler and transferred to the bath when it was in place in the living room.

I have no recollection of the sleeping arrangements, or of any other part of the house. The back garden contained a cherry tree, and the path was lined with black rope twist edging. The sound of sparrows twittering always reminds me of this garden.
To me there was nothing strange about leaving the safety of the West Country for the obvious dangers of London. Nor did the sight of the large numbers of bombed buildings seem at all odd. That, for me, was how London normally looked. And the sounds of distant explosions and of ‘doodle bugs’ droning overhead were equally normal.

Here I also seemed to have a licence to roam at will, and discovered searchlights and anti-aircraft guns in the woods nearby. I also went to see a German fighter which had crashed. It had made a deep hole in the ground, and one of the onlookers remarked that the pilot had been compressed to the size of a tin of corned beef.

Trams rattling and rolling along their tracks were the main local public transport, and we would ride in them to Woolwich. Beresford Square market was the main attraction, I think. In my memory it was filled with stalls selling vegetables and seafood, along with a distinctive smell which was of a mixture of all these things. I was always treated to some cockles, sold by the pint measure. These often constituted tea, too. We also visited the Co-op department store. The money for purchases was placed in little tubes and sent whizzing along overhead wires to a central cash desk. When the tube returned it contained your change, together with your dividend in the form of embossed tin discs.

Sometimes we would have a ride on the Woolwich Free Ferry, to the other side of the Thames and back, mainly so that I could watch the big shiny engine at work.

I was very close to my grandmother. She was, to me, a plump jolly woman. I kept some of my favourite toys and books in her house.

Back in Yeovil, the war hardly impinged physically on our lives, althougnmy mother must have been very lonely and worried for the safety of my father, who spent much of the war in North Africa, Italy and Greece. Only two war-related incidents in Yeovil remain in my memory. One is of an aircraft, whether one of ours or one of theirs I do not know, passing extremely low and fast over our house. The other is seeing the aftermath of a bomb which demolished the Fifty Shilling Tailor's premises in Yeovil. There must have been many raids on the Westland works, the other side of town, but I remember nothing of these

My first school was just a few minutes walk away. It had one large room, perhaps a hall, divided into two classes by a large folding door. I refused to drink the free milk from a bottle, and insisted that it be warmed and sweetened and served in a cup. I have always loved books and could read before I went to school. My favourite author was Enid Blyton, and my first regular periodical was her little magazine, Sunny Stories.

My next school was near the town centre, Huish I think it was called. It was a stone building next to the famous sloping ground of Yeovil Town Football Club. I was happy there, and was befriended by one of the teachers, Miss McNeilly, who encouraged me to visit her home with my books. I would ride to her bungalow with a book strapped to the carrier of my bike.

My first bike, other a tricycle, was what was known as a Fairy Cycle. It was a very simple affair, with a single tube connecting the front to the back, rather like a scooter. But my next bike was the real thing, a shiny new blue B.S.A., given to me by my grandmother.

A bus was supplied to get us to the school, but it was not free. It cost a penny each way. This was significant, because in those days every small boy had a bus conductor's outfit, as well as a cowboy outfit. Bus tickets were small slips of paper, stapled together in bundles at the bottom and usually colour coded. The bus conductor carried them on a ticket holder equipped with a row of spring clips and tore the appropriate ticket from the bundle before punching a hole in it with his punch, which tinged as he did so. These tickets were avidly collected, to replenish the supplies on ones own ticket holder, and brand-new unused ones were greatly prized. Very often the conductor on the school bus, knowing all this, didn’t issue tickets for our pennies but scattered the un-punched tickets into the queue at the bus stop.

I did not always catch the bus home. It was quite a long walk, but I sometimes reckoned it was worth it in order to be able to buy a currant bun to chew or an Oxo cube to suck.

When the war ended toys began to trickle back into the shops. A neighbour who worked in a department store in Yeovil was able to obtain a Meccano outfit for me. And one day, when my mother and I were in another shop, we spotted a small partitioned box containing probably a dozen Dinky lorries. This was the first new Dinky I ever owned. I already had others, although I don't know where they came from, and I obtained many more thereafter. I've seen examples of some of them since, and they're worth a fortune.

I also had my first peach about this time, a juicy, memorable experience.

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