大象传媒

During the war my mother and I worked in 'Broadgate', being the main thoroughfare running through the town of Coventry - me as a restaurant cashier and Mum as a daily housekeeper. At the end of our working day we journeyd home to our small rented house in Cope Street behind the Cathedral. This particular day there had been two heavy air-raids and on arriving home we found it to be a pile of bricks!
On ringing the police to find somewhere to stay, they replied that everywhere was full of homeless, bombed out people, including the prison cells, suggesting the only alternative - to rely on the charity of others!
Well, after knocking on a door where we knew an old man lived alone he answered "There is a spare bedroom" It contained a large fourposter bed, with tattered tapestry hangings smelling a bit musty, but beggars cant be choosers and we were grateful! In the night I awoke to find my mother sat on a chair with a candle lit. On enquireing the reason her reply was "The whole place is running with bugs!" Early next morning we crept down stairs and out of the house, using a public toilet for a wash before starting work.
That night a housewife took us in, saying although there was no accomodation, we were welcome to sleep on the peg-rug in front of her fire.
On the third night following the devestation of our house, we heard about an air-raid shelter underneath Coventry Cathedral, where we slept on bunk beds.
The following dat my mother phoned my soldier brother who was on coastal duty in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.He assured us that lodgings would be waiting and to come at once. Onarrival our landlady relayed the news that on the day of our dparture Coventry Cathedral had received a direct hit from a bomb reducing it to rubble! What a lucky escape!
After 4 weeks we moved to Ipswich where my mother obtained a post as a live-in housekeeper to a vicar in Corder Road, and I secured lodgings in a sweet shop in Orford Street. Then the G.P.O employed me as a postwoman. A few months went by leading to a job as a G.P.O mail van driver - at the age of 18yrs.
One of the runs was driving a mail-van the size of a lorry to H.M.S Ganges, Shotley, where along the way stretching from Bourne Bridge were sentries in boxes, as this part was classed as a military war-zone! Annother duty was to collect money from telephone boxes which involved a lot of driving in the 'black-out' all over Suffolk as well as collecting mail from post boxes, intermingled with a walking post round twice a day, from 5 in the morning to 5 in the evening.
This was my work for the remainder of the war.

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