大象传媒

Well the week after the Bristol bombing raid I was to be married at St. Pauls Church. However that church was burned. There was an unexploded bomb in the grounds of St. Mary Redcliffe and also another local Church - St. Francis, was also burned. All the weddings booked for these three churches had to be carried out at the local semi church - church hall just round the corner from where I lived, although you couldn't get to it easily as there were the two big craters across the road at the bottom. There was a queue of brides in cars outside and brides passed on the stone steps leading up to the church door. When you came out from signing the register, all your guests had been put outside so the next brides guests were in the church and there was no nice background for the pictures.

Due to no gas, water or electricity, after the bombing we had arranged to hold the reception in the hall underneath this little church hall. There was nowhere to heat the water for tea etc. but there was a Night watchman outside with his coke brazier and he kindly boiled the water for us.

It was really a chaotic time. To get home after, I had to walk round where the craters were. The earth had ended up right against the bay windows of the houses either side of the road, so in my wedding dress I had to climb up over this mountain of mud to get to my road. However it went off quite well and at that time it didn't seem such a disaster as it would do today.

Just as young men were called up at 20, so on the day of my wedding it had been decreed that all youn women too were to register for war service. As my wedding wasn't till the afternoon, I and a friend went to town in the morning to register. However we weren't called up at once and as I was being married would not have been called up. However, in early 1943 they were short of women for essential jobs and I was to have been called up and could have been sent anywhere. It was just fortunate that we had decided to start a family as by then my husband was posted in the Plymouth area on a RADAR station so being a mother exempted me from callup.

However, after my wedding, my Mother had a distant relative who had a friend at Portishead. This friend was a Nurse and was glad of someone to move in for a while to take care of her old father. Hence we went to Portishead for about 6 months, by which time the worst of bombing was over. My Dad, being a traveller used to drive to Bristol in the mornings so I went too. Then I would wait at our Bristol house for him to pick me up to go back to Portishead.

During the raids on the town, the building where I worked was blitzed and we had to go some way to work at one of the bosses home. He had evacuated to a safer area to live, so his house was used as an office until things got sorted out.

The good Friday raid was the worst raid I experienced and looking back I don't know how we survived it all. Before the raids started to be heavy, my Dad used to come home from work and when the gas pipes had been damaged and we had no gas, my Mum used to have to warm my father's meal over a saucepan of hot water on the fire. If the sirens had gone I would be sitting under the
stairs as it was supposed to be safer there should a bomb drop.

Food was rationed right at the start of the war. In the first world war they didn't start rationing till things got short as of course there wasn't the bombing then. However they had to bring in rationing in the end. My Mother had to get an allotment and dig it and plant potatoes and vegetables for herself and my sister when my father was in the army in France. She also got chickens and when grown to fowls, she had to kill them herself which wasn't very nice but they had to eat.

Rationing wasn't very nice, though if you hd children you did get a ration of fresh milk. Otherwise it was dried milk. The amount of butter would be gone in one meal, as it was a tiny bit per person. We had to come to using margarine which in those days wasn't like the sort we get today. Sweets were also rationed even for some years after the war. It must have been still rationed in about 1952 as I can recall buying a few ounces of two or three sorts and dividing them up between my three children as treats.

Clothes were also rationed having to give points for certain clothes. This went on for some time after the war finished too. Furnture etc was not made for a long time and with people losing their homes andfurniture in the bombing, things were vad. It was the end of the war or even after before Utility furniture (just certain sorts and styles) came on the moarket.

I bought my first house near the end of the war and had a few bits of old furniture from an elderly relative so we had a table and chairs and bed. We went to Bath and one furniture shop had sideboard and 4 dining chairs left which we bought. I got two big boxes that meat was delivered to the butcher in and I cleaned them and put hinges on the lid. Then I got old material and padded the tops. My Aunt had a man friend who worked in a drapers, and he managed to get me an oddment of material which I used to cover the padded tops. These two boxes stood each side of the grate in my lounge until at the end of the war I managed to get a very worn three piece suite. He again found an oddment of material and I was able to cover the worn arms of the furniture. It wasn't much of a home but at the time it was wonderful and much more than many others had. It taught us to take care of everything and make-do as much as possible.

Prams were unobtainable during the war and second hand ones often had worn tyres which couldn't be replaced. I can recall a friend of mine having thick rope tyres.
When I had my first daughter I was living with my Mother and she saw an advertisement for a pram out in the country. She went on the train and got it. It wasn't the latest fashion but had lovely thick rubber wheels. It was much better made that one I had later for my second daughter which was the first ones made after the war.

Near the end of the war you could put your name down for carpets. However if you didn't lke the one available when your turn came you didn't get on and would go to the end of the list again. I was happy enough to get one at all!

The same with stair carpet. It wasn't in the shops so a neighbour had told me she made rugs with thick fawn garden string, so i tried it. It was like knitting with quick knit wool. I made some rugs, even introducing green garden string into the pattern. Then the lino I'd managed to get for stairs was cracking, so I set to making stair carpet. I did a centre length and then a narrow strip of the green each side and then a narrow of the beige for the edge. This lasted some years and even went too when we moved to Wembley. It's surprising what you can do when you have to!

When my Aunt married, by then you were given furniture points , and as she and her husband-to-be already had their homes, she let me have some points so I was able to get a proper Utility bedroom suite. This was at the end of the war.

My main memory of VE day was that my next door neighbours took their piano out on the pavement for a few nights and had a sing song, which was difficult for me as I had an 18 month old baby.

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