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In talking to my father last week about the Coal House programme I learned for the first time that my grandparents had taken in an evacuee. Strange that I had never heard the story before as we're such a gossipy family!

Dad was 8 in 1941 and the evacuee, from Birmingham, was called Frank Barr and he would have been about 9 or 10 and lived with them for about 6 months. Dad and his parents lived in Alma Road in Maesteg in a two-up-two-down with the usual privvies in a little block toward the bottom of the garden.

Dad said Frank had a brother who was also billeted with a family in Princess Street in Maesteg. He was older, and Dad guesses that perhaps a home to accommodate both of them couldn't be found.

Dad wholly resented Frank (no doubt because Frank shared his bedroom and had been 'imposed' in the house), but the very worst "crime" of all was that Frank had learned to dry some plant alternative for tobacco and would smoke this in the privvy at the bottom of the garden!

Dad thinks he had learned this bit of wartime resourcefulness from Uncle Tom next door - who was a very keen and skilled gardener! Dad said he wouldn't have been bothered except that Frank was obviously too impatient for a ciggy to wait until his plant had properly dried, so he smoked them half-dried - and so made a most obnoxious pong with it!

I've now been looking up this apparent tobacco substitute and found it might be a plant called 'Coltsfoot' which is a wild plant or herb; still used quite a bit, ironically, in cough and cold remedies.