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I was walking along Ilford High Road early on a Friday morning when, suddenly, a Messerschmitt 109 came down the High Street firing his guns. I ducked under the canopy of the cinema, which he did not hit.

Later in the war, in the doodle bug era, I was riding a cycle along the street. A doodle bug had cut it's engine but instead of coming down, glided about 5 miles to land on a bombed site about 50 yards in front of me.

Next thing I knew I was blown off the bike with a lump of it in my knee. A similar thing happened to my father, only he saw it coming down and threw himself behind a wall, to collect his battered bike from somebody's back garden later.

We were both very lucky.

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