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A memory I have is of the nurses’ home in Frederick Street burning. I was seven years old and remember thinking that it was great. It was the biggest bonfire I had ever seen and besides that I was allowed out. I knew it was very late for me to be out. As children we played our usual games like Tig and Skipping while the older people like my mother and our neighbours just stood about talking and praying.

The clothes and food were rationed. We had to have coupons for clothes. I can remember my mother was worried about clothing coupons. My sister was getting married and my mother was worried she might not have coupons for all the wedding clothes. As it happened we all got a new outfit for the wedding. When I was a child I got so used to dried eggs that when we did get eggs after rationing finished I didn’t like them and to this day I still don’t much like eggs!

I remember the barrage balloons, I was so afraid of them I thought if they burst they would fall on me and I would die because they were full of gas.

Another memory of as a child is the words of a little song we used to sing. It goes like this:

“Hey little hen when, when, when will you lay me an egg for my tea?
Go into your nest and do your very best and I will do the rest.
“Hey little hen when, when, when will you lay me an egg for
my tea?�

If there are other words to this song, I can’t remember them. Perhaps someone else will?

My family was evacuated to Annalong. My mother got a little cottage. It was too small for my mother and her seven children. The welfare worker told my mother that at least two of us would have to go and live with another family. My sister; aged 13, and I; aged 7 were placed with another family just around the corner from my mother. I grew to love this family; they were so good to us. Of course, we only had our meals and slept there. My sister and I spent all our free-time with our own family. When it came time to come home to Belfast, we children didn’t want to go!

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