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I was born in 1938 and my earliest memories are of living with air raids, rationing and war-time shortages as a part of normal life. In 1940 we moved from the shadow of Fulham Power Station, which was a target for bombers, to Merton Road Wandsworth.The house we lived in already had an Andersen Shelter in the back garden. Whenever the sirens went there were trips to it, mostly in the dark. The family dog was usually first in, and I was usually the last, struggling to get my boots on in the blackout. We got used to the bombing raids and enjoyed playing on the bombsites in between, often there was no school. After a raid the dog was an expert at smelling out shrapnel which we collected in dried milk tins. (I don't know what we did with it). I remember the food rations very well, margarine, spam, corned beef, dried egg, no fruit, (The only bananas I saw were the false hand on display at the Greengrocers). We kept rabbits, that I thought were pets and was horrified to see one served up for tea as a treat. My parents decided to evacuate us when the V1's started. I was out playing on a couple of occasions and did not make it back to the shelter and my mum was very worried ( I was about 6 at that time). I was evacuated with one of my elder brothers (3 boys and 2 girls in the family at that time). We went from the local school, duly labelled, by tram to Kings Cross and finished up in Kettering, Northants. We were billeted together with an elderly couple that really looked after us. We failed to appreciate them and made their life difficult. We were very close to Wicksteed Park and spent a lot of time there on the slides, roundabouts etc. They gave us each a pair of binoculars and we watched the aircraft going to and fro and became experts at identifying them. The music of that period has stayed with me, "You are my Sunshine". Mare's eat oats and Doe's eat Oats, "Roll me over in the Clover" and "Don't fence me in". We seem to have been away from home for years but it was only about 9 months or so before our dad came to collect us.

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