大象传媒

I lived with my parents in Catford. My grandfather had a removal and storage business in Lewisham.
I remember each night going out to sleep in the next door neighbours' anderson shelter, with the steady crunch of AA fire and bombs dropping. One day my father spotted an escaped budgerigar in our garden. He caught it and my mother and I went off to Lee High Road to buy a cage. The siren sounded whilst we were in the shop. We left to go to a street shelter without getting the cage. I remember looking up into a blue sky that afternoon and thinking that the bombers appeared as silver fish surrounded by black puffs [the AA shells bursting]. We joined others in the shelter and a cheer went up as a parachute came down [it was thought a German one]. The "all clear" sounded and we caught a bus home. There was the aftermath of the raid littering the High Road with the bus weaving and jolting to avoid the debris etc. A school which I was due to join was struck by a stick of bombs killing 20+ of the children.
Whilst my father stayed in London fire watching [he worked for the ministry of Works] my mother and I with the rest of the school evacuated to Aylesbury. Soon afterwards a land mine landed in the next street to other house in Catford and blew the roof off.
A year or so later we moved to Selsdon near Croydon. However I was again evacuated this time to South Wales. An interesting experience for a small boy on his own but with other school children. We ended up on a bus in Cefn Coed with the bus stopping at various places, people coming on board and choosing who they would take. The girls seemed to be the most popular! Eventually I was dropped off at a farm. They said that they could only keep me for a month. It a shock to go to a thatched house with no electricity and an outside loo in a wooden shed situated conveniently over a stream. The loo paper consisted of Daily Mirror squares tied up with sisal. They were a happy lot and looked after me well. The pig had been killed the previous day and they were busy with the brine etc. I have never tasted better bacon than that from a previous animal the sides of which were placed in the walls of the ingle nook chimney for smoking. I subsequently went on after a month or so to another farm further up the Taff valley and had some strange experiences there but that is another story.

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