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My mother was a teacher at Amberley Road Primary School, Paddington, in London and she was evacuated before the declaration of war in 1939. We joined her and spent the first winter of the war in Burnham on Sea.

By Easter 1940 the children from Amberley Road were drifting back to London when the expected bombing of London had not materialised. A member of staff was needed to return to the school and Mother jumped at the chance to return home. My sister and I went back to our old Grammar Schools; Burlington for me and Ealing County for my sister.

By May 1940 the BEF was being beaten back to the French coast and it was decided by 'the powers that be' to evacuate children from London again.

This time my sister and I were to be official evacuees. This involved a medical and being told to report back to the school from where we were bussed to Paddington Station, all of us with luggage labels tied securely on to our person and gas masks slung round our necks.

Once at Paddington, everyone was herded on to a train and we set off for some unknown destination - the train staff were forbidden to tell anyone! This was an enormous adventure for many of the children who mostly came from poor areas of London and whose greatest treat prior to this might have been hop-picking.

The journey was endless and everyone on board was hot, tired and thoroughly fed up. Eventually towards evening we arrived at a station, still no idea where, as all name boards had been removed for security reasons. It turned out to be Penrhyn in Cornwall.

On our arrival at the station there was a stationary train on the up-line. It was full of service men who had been rescued from the beaches of Northern France. They were cheerful, I remember, but many had lost most of their equipment and uniforms.

The following day we went into Falmouth to explore and the whole of that huge natural harbour and the bay outside was crammed full of every shape and size of vessel that had gone to the rescue of our army. It wasn't just the channel ports that were affected by Dunkirk - the aftermath extended as far as Cornwall.

We evacuees were detrained at Penrhyn and marched to the school where the local people came to choose the children to be billeted with them. It was like a cattle market with people saying ' I'll have you and you…!' Quite a number came up to my sister and me - we were wearing our grammar school uniforms - but they retreated hastily when we said we wouldn't be billeted without our mother.

Eventually everyone had been taken except our mother and us. By now it was getting late and the billeting officer was becoming desperate. She finally led us to the house of Mr and Mrs Chegwidden who for some reason hadn't been included in the original list of hosts. There was no argument - people in reception areas were told how many children or expectant mums or mums with pre-school children they had to have.

My sister and I were enrolled at Falmouth County High School where we were allowed to wear the uniforms of our 'proper schools'.

FCHS is, or was, situated on a hill overlooking the docks. A so-called air raid shelter had been built but it was a mere slit trench with no cover. No sooner had we started at the school than the Luftwaffe began to bomb the docks in daylight raids using Stuka dive bombers. I shall never forget the scream as they dived on the docks. The school had to be closed while the trench was made safer by being covered over the top.

Despite the war and the privations it imposed upon us, this was a happy time for my sister and me. It was also an eye-opener in that it was our first experience of an outside loo without a flush and war time menus. In Cornwall, chez Chegwidden, we had pasties made with rock hard pastry and any old scraps of meat and bread pudding that was just like slabs of wet concrete.

Eventually my Mother could stand it no longer and she rented a bungalow in Penrhyn. It was a longer walk to school but we didn't mind - in fact we did it twice a day returning to school in the evening for Girls' Training Corps.

In our new 'home' my Mother was able to do her own cooking. I don't know how she managed to provide for us on the little allowed but she became very inventive. One Christmas, our milkman who was a farmer, offered us a rabbit which my Mother stuffed and we had for Christmas lunch.

In the Spring of 1944 we returned to London and to heavy bombing. Our house in Acton had been damaged and we stayed with friends until it was made habitable once more. But the bombing continued and we used to huddle in the cupboard under the stairs during air raids.

Conventional bombing was supplemented by V1s - the infamous doodlebugs. Once while out walking, this strange looking aircraft chugged overhead, flame coming out of its exhaust, followed by one of our fighters. Suddenly the engine cut out and the flying bomb plunged to earth. They were terrifying and you could hear them coming over day and night. V1s were superseded by V2s or as the propaganda would have it, flying gas mains.

Upon leaving school, my sister and I were directed to work at CAV - we had no choice where we went to work. We worked on the top floor of the building and when we heard a doodlebug coming, all we could do was duck under a table and pray it didn't have our names on it.

When the invasion of France took place the launching sites of these flying bombs were quickly over run - much to everyone's relief.

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