大象传媒

I remember very vividly the day after my birthday in 1943, I say the day after my birthday but it may just have been the day after the party. We lived in Brighton, in a flat in Gloucester Place just along from the Astoria cinema. My mother worked in the building next door to us and my Dad having been invalided from the Army was working in Telephone House again just along the road. I went to school that morning up Richmond Hill which was really just over the road. sometime during the morning the siren sounded and we all had to get under our desks. I heard the bomber go over and the sound of gunfire, the bullets which went through the classroom windows thudded into the wall. There was a very loud explosion and shortly afterwards the all clear was sounded.
I think after that my Aunt who lived with us came to pick me up. Walking down the hill back home I remember the scene with fire engines and ambulances and the gaping hole where the bomb had dropped leaving the building where Mum worked and ours the next ones standing. The trees opposite the house were covered in debris I remember clearly there being mattresses up there for some time after. The rescue work went on all night and next day although I wasn'tm allowed to look!.
The story I heard some years later was that the bomber had been chased from London back to the south coast and dropped its bomb on the way out to sea. My Dad had been shopping along the road and saw the bomber going overhead with the bomb-bay doors open and chased it back to our house when he saw the explosion. I vividly rmember the state if oiur front room with the remains of yesterdays party on the table covered in dust, in the blacmange and trifle. Worst of all there was a hole in my drum which had been a present.