大象传媒

I was born in 1938, so these are very early memories- unfortunately, I can remember nothing of V.E. Day itself, although it was the day after my birthday. My dad worked in the Spitfire factory near Southampton and cycled to work and did 6 weeks on nights and 6 weeks on days and my mum had great difficulty keeping my younger sister and I quiet when he needed to sleep during the day. We had a morrison shelter in the dining room and I used it for a playhouse with my dolls (it hurt if you hit youself on it !). My dad was also in the home guard and he used to stand his rifle behind the copper in the washhouse. I can remember seeing lots of gliders going over one night and on several occasions seeing the night sky lit up when southampton docks were bombed.The bread was dirty grey - I liked the dried egg (although my gran kept the village shop in Kings Worthy and had chickens, so we did have fresh eggs sometimes). I also liked the margarine - the paper had brown writing on - and mum used to make a lovely (sausage) pudding in a basin which was steamed ( when I was older she told me the recipe and it was nearly all breadcrumbs, potato and herbs from the garden). I had a mickey mouse gasmask which terrified me and one day I was allowed to hold my china doll if I put the gasmask on - I dropped the doll and her leg broke so I got two smacks, one for dropping the doll and one for not putting on the gasmask! Her leg was mended with elastoplast and I wasnt allowed to play with her very often. On Christmas day my dad got a big branch of a fir tree and it was secretly put in the front room and decorated. What a surprise on Christmas morning! My gran had made little bells of foil(?) put over her thimble and strung them together on thread (I still have her thimble).

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