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In September 1939 I was working in the Surveyor’s Office of our local Rural District Council in the next village to my home. On the 1st September the staff were sent to Leicester railway station to meet incoming evacuees and assist with the billeting of them. The children assigned to my village were taken to various homes where people had agreed (or been ordered) to care for them. My parents took an eight year old girl whose brother went to the next door neighbours.

On Sunday 3rd September most of the children were sent to Sunday school to hear the 11am broadcast of declaration of war. It was a glorious day and in the afternoon we took some of the children blackberrying. Our evacuee, Elaine stayed with us for the whole of the war years and was my bridesmaid in 1941.

Later in the month our office was taken over by the government as the local Food Office and the huge task of issuing ration books began. We had about twenty villages in the Rural District, all of which we had to visit to issue ration books and National Registration Cards. Later on in the war I was involved in the ‘Meat Pies for Rural Workers’ scheme; local bakers baked pies for distribution to agricultural workers who could not make use of the ‘British Restaurants’ which were in the urban areas.

Our W.I. joined in the schemes for canning fruit. I was also a part-time faire-woman in the A.F.S. in the local control room.

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