When I was six years old the second world war started. With it came rationing, queues and evacuees. Evacuees were kids from London who were taken from their families and sent to safer towns and into the countryside, away from the German air-raids and bombs. One summer鈥檚 day all the mothers on the street were standing outside their front doors. From the Iffley road* end of the street came hundreds of kids from London. Brothers and sisters hand-in-hand, gas masks in card-board boxes hung on strings over their shoulders. Streams of frightened five to fifteen-year old kids. Our mum said to the volunteer who was herding them along 鈥淚鈥檒l take those two,鈥 and so we had two more kids in the house. They were called Peggy and Leonard Lamb. All I remember about them is that they cried every night.
We had some great times during the war, even though it seemed we were always hungry. At the bottom of our back garden, over the hedge, was a large area of land divided into hundreds of allotments. Allotments were plots of land, about 20ft by 50ft, which were allotted to members of the community so that they could grow their own vegetables. Our dad had an allotment; of course, because it was run by the government, he had to ride his bicycle about 2 miles to get to his plot. We would climb over the hedge and steal rhubarb from the man who had the plot behind our house. Then we had to also steal sugar to dip it into.
Because of the danger of air-raids every house and business was blacked out. It was called the blackout! The pubs all had a shelter over their entrances to prevent light escaping when the locals went in for their pint. These shelters were perfect for letting off smoke bombs. We would get a roll of old Kodak film, which used to be very flammable, roll it in newspaper, light it then quickly stamp out the flame. The film bomb would then pour out gobs of fantastic stinky yellow smoke, which when let off in the shelter would empty the pub really fast.
The blackout was great for our gang because we could pull off lots of tricks and not be caught because of the cover of darkness. We would tie the door-knocker of a house on one side of the street to that of one on the other side of the street with thread, then wait for someone to ride by on their bike. The bike would break the thread and knock both doors at the same time Then the home owners would come to the door to find no-one there. We were hiding behind someone鈥檚 wall to watch the fun. That was a big deal to us at age 9 or 10.
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