September 1939: READING
On arrival at 12 Waylen Street, Reading we were shown our bedroom and I was pleased to discover it contained a lovely dolls house filled with furniture, a Noah's Ark neither of which had I ever had, and a lovely doll about 2 feet high with beautiful clothes. They had belonged to the daughter of the couple we were staying with who had died when she was quite young. The toys took the edge off my homesickness but a few days later I arrived back from school and they were no longer there. No explanation was given. Perhaps they reminded the parents too much of the child they had lost.
Life was very different in our new home. The whole atmosphere seemed cold, stern and Victorian, so different from the loving family warmth we were used to. I do not recall ever being cuddled by while we lived there.
Foster parents were paid 8 shillings and sixpence a week for each child with the parents provided clothing. Our parents sent one pound weekly and the money left over was our pocket money of 1 shilling and sixpence. Out of this we each saved 6d in National Savings stamps, paid 6d for the comics Dandy and Beano and had 6d left for pocket money.
As in London the streets of Reading were being made ready for war with sandbags placed at the foot of each lamp-post which were only to be used to put out incendiary fires.
A couple of years later the wonderful cast iron railings and gates fronting many Victorian and Edwardian houses were cut off and sent away by the lorry load to supply iron for the war effort. These were left rusting in great piles and regrettably the elegant look of many streets was changed for ever.
Stirrup pumps, a pump which with a bucket of water could be worked by two people to put a fire, were issued with the stern warning that they were not to be used for gardening purposes.
Street lights went unlit, car headlamps were dimmed and windows were blacked out during the hours of darkness. Air Raid Wardens (ARP) patrolled the streets after dark, checking that no buildings in their allotted streets showed a light. The shout ‘Put that light out’ became quite a joke eventually.
Walking in the streets after dark became hazardous without a torch. In any case these had to be masked to give the barest of light. Cars lamps were also almost completely covered leaving room for only a tiny beam to light the way which caused many accidents.
Sign posts were taken down to ensure the enemy, should they arrive, was not helped and roads leading to military bases and airfields were barricaded to prevent access by anyone without a pass.
In some parks and open spaces ack ack guns, silver grey barrage balloons like great headless and legless elephants and searchlights appeared along with the personnel to operate them. In London after returning from evacuation later in the war, we watched the searchlights sweep the night sky, their beams sometimes crossing each other and homing in on a plane.
On Saturday mornings that winter we were allowed to stay in bed while we read the our comics, the Beano and Dandy. Some mornings we played silly games or have pillow fights and one morning, playing the fool.
Suddenly his eyes moved to the door behind me and his face changed and turning I found uncle Frank watching us. From the look on his face I knew we were in trouble, although I did not know why. Terrified I buried my head under the bedclothes and because I had been ill I was not beaten and my brother took a hiding for both of us.
At home in London, despite having no hot water on tap, we never washed in cold water. The house in Reading had a bathroom with a bath and a geyser but as a rule there was never any hot water except on bath night. This meant that washing during the winter was a chilly affair which was often consisted of no more thank a lick and a promise so far as I was concerned.
In the middle of the night a few days after our arrival the air raid siren sounded and we were told to dress quickly. The nearest air-raid shelter was at the end of the street and we started making our way to it through the deserted, dark street with only a torch to show us the way. A few steps away from th house we encountered an irate air-raid warden who demanded to know what we thought were doing and he ordered us back to the house. Apparently the siren was only being tested, something which everyone except us seemed to know.
Eventually Hector erected an Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden under the laburnum tree and for weeks afterwards every time the air raid siren wailed during the night we were woken and had to leave our warm beds and traipse down to the damp, cold and musty shelter which held a good complement of spiders, worms, insects and earwigs. Having read a story about earwigs I never spent a comfortable night in the shelter for fear of one climbing into my ear! By February 1940, with no sign of any German bombers, we were allowed once more to remain in bed at night when the warning went.
It took some time to get used to a different diet. Frank and Doris had been raised in Manchester and were accustomed to a different diet to the one we were used to at home in London. One meal served was tripe and swedes neither of which we had ever seen let alone eaten. The food stuck in my mouth and I gagged while Bernard did manage a couple of mouthfuls. Unable to eat the food we were told we had to go hungry until the next meal and were then lectured at length about wasting food in war time and made to feel extremely ungrateful for not clearing our plates. We often went hungry when we found ourselves unable to eat some of the meals served. Pigs trotters, brains, brawn and the infamous tripe and swedes.
Preparations had been made before the war had begun for food rationing and ration books were issued in December 1939 with rationing introduced in January 1940. The allowance varied through the war but initially everyone was allowed 4 ounces of butter, 12 of sugar, 4 of cooked ham or bacon, and 3½ uncooked, 4 of butter, 1 of cheese, 4 ofs tea. Later when meat was added the ration could be as low as 1 lb a week. In 1941, one of the worst years when many ships in food convoys were sunk in ‘U Boat Alley, the ration was 2 ounces butter, 2 of lard, 1 ounce cheese, 4 ounces bacon, 2 ounces tea, 8 ounces sugar, 2 ounces Spam, 1 egg, 1 shilling and 6d worth of meat and 2 slices of cooked meat. It took some people quite a while to get used to short rations. The shops received many goods in large packages and almost every food item was weighed out to order. With rationing everyone registered with a grocers and could only buy their rations foods from him. That way he knew how much food to order and had to keep records of the amounts.
Hector was a good gardener and turned over much of the back garden to vegetables as the war progressed. In summer it was a pleasant addition to the sweet ration to pick fresh young peas or runner beans and eat them raw. He also grew black and red currants and gooseberries (known to us then as ‘goosgogs' which we picked when no-one was looking.
Dora preserved a variety of foods, bottling fruit and vegetables in season and making various conserves such as gooseberry, plum, damson jams and blackberry jelly. She also made adapted recipes using marrow instead of melon for melon and ginger jam. She also stored eggs in isinglass and sometimes utilised a hay box in her winter cooking.
Both my parents were on war work, Mum having been conscripted to war work at the Ever Ready battery factory, Wathamstow. There were few times when they were both off together allowing them the opportunity to travel down to see us. I do not recall more than one or two visits although there were probably more. What I do remember is my homesickness and how we yearned to see their familiar loving faces again.
In the first few weeks of evacuation, we spent every Saturday from ten until lunchtime at the coach station in Reading waiting for the London coaches to arrive. As each one pulled in we watched everyone alight, hoping to see our parents but as the weeks passed we realised that this was unlikely to happen and started spending our Saturdays out and about in the surrounding countryside.
While we still occasionally returned to the bus station to wait for the London buses - the countryside was a new distracting experience and gave us considerable freedom from the restrictions at Waylen Street.
In our early days in 1939, on hot summer evenings filled with the sounds of insects buzzing, Dora and Hector sometimes took us on long walks into the countryside and along the Thames, where we passed moored river craft and cyclists until we reached Mapledurham or Sonning.
However being with the adults and having to be on our best behaviour took much of the fun out of the walk and I found there were restrictions on what I could do. Because I had been ill when I was four and in hospital for 18 months I was forbidden to swing on gates, run, climb trees or wander at will in case it strained my heart.
Soon after we arrived during one summer evening’s walk, Doris offered us some chocolate drops covered in hundreds and thousands. This seemed quite a treat until we discovered they were a chocolate flavoured laxative called Ex-Lax. We held the ‘chocolate’ in our mouths as they melted and walked a little faster in the hope we would find an opportunity to spit them out without being seen. But every time we turned to see if we were out of sight we found they were still close behind us and in the end we had to swallow the foul medicine.
Keeping our bowels open appeared to be something they had on their mind quite frequently and we were treated to a variety of bowel loosening mixtures including Cascara Sagrada, which really must be the foulest tasting laxative ever and Senna Pod tea, another laxative. It really taught us the true meaning of the word evacuation.
In the centre of Reading are the Forbury Gardens and the remains of Reading Abbey founded in 1121 by Henry I who is buried at the abbey. In 1939 the cloisters contained a stone rendering, now in Reading Museum, of an ancient page of music which was one of the earliest recorded pieces of English. ‘Sumer is icumen in’, a four-part rotational harmony dating from around 1225.
Forbury Gardens also contains a huge statue of a ferocious lion erected in memory of the men of the 66th Foot (later known as the Berkshires) who died at the battle of Maiwana during the 1886 Afghan campaign.
While Frank was still joining us on these walks he told us the lion roared whenever he smelt roast beef. However I must say I never heard him! But then it was wartime and the rationing was such that few were cooking roast beef. The fragrance most frequently encountered around Reading then was the sweet, mouth watering scent of biscuits baking at the Huntley and Palmers biscuit factory.
Eventually we became familiar and comfortable with the surrounding countryside and when the weather allowed, were able to spend our weekends out and about on our own. On occasion I sometimes walked for several miles, exploring.
I soon became familiar with the district and different walks one could take. Caversham was a short walk away but on turning left before crossing Caversham Bridge I found I could walk along the river for about 5 miles and further on were Mapledurham and Pangbourne.
At other times, turning right at the bridge, I found myself walking along the tow path and passing Huntley and Palmer’s Cricket Ground and Sutton’s Nursery, and when the long hot summer days arrived I walked to Henley and back.
As with so many villages around Reading one could walk long stretches of river bank without meeting a soul and through quiet, peaceful village lanes. On arrival in Sonning I found houses with old garden walls which bulged out and threatened to collapse if it were not for the covering of wisteria, clematis, roses and honeysuckle. Gardeners tending their delphiniums, lupins or roses greeted me with friendly nods just as if I knew them as old friends.
A penny bus ride away was Tilehurst where I could explore the woods, or take the road along the river path back to Caversham. In the early days Bern and I stayed together but eventually we rarely stayed together and by summer 1940, during the long hot days, we went our separate ways and met up later, returning home as late as possible but before dark.
I’m afraid my childhood experience with Frank has, perhaps, lead me to misjudge him. I can only remember him as being bad tempered and having little patience with children. He related stories from his past when he had humiliated people he disliked and recalled his sister inviting a beau home and placing an old slice of wedding cake on the guest’s tea plate and then accusing him of bringing his own piece of mouldy cake and chasing him out of the house.
He was extremely talented and had played the banjo professionally in his younger days and had formed his own banjo band. He was also very artistic.
When we first arrived in Reading my brother had a whitlow on his finger and Frank told him to put his finger into a bowl of near boiling water. No doubt this was the only treatment at that time but little pity was shown for poor Bern’s distress, discomfort and pain during the operation, especially as a razor blade was laid beside the bowl on the table in case the hot water treatment did not work.
Frank and Hector did not always see eye to eye about raising us, Frank’s maxim being spare the rod and spoil the child, but Hector, (a draughtsman on war work at Farnborough, Berkshire, north of Newbury), did befriend and protect us from Frank’s anger but for much of the time he was not home.
On another occasion my brother helped me turn a somersault in the backyard which, because of my earlier illness, was forbidden and seeing what happened Frank turned on Bern and started beating him with a stick. Hector, a much smaller and less aggressive man, intervened to stop him and when Frank had Hector stretched out over the table, and was punching and threatening to kill him, I ran screaming into the toilet and locked myself in. This was my first experience of a man being a tyrant in the home and it turned me into a coward when facing confrontational situations.
One good thing did come of this event for Frank said that as long as we remained in the house he would keep to his room and would never speak to us again. From that time on we hardly saw him and his absence made life a lot easier for us.
We attended the local school, a Victorian building, a short way along Oxford Road. With most country towns and villages filled with evacuees eventually many more children arrived soon after us. Since some had nits and lice in their hair it was not long before I became infested and went through the humiliation of taking a note home and the whole family had to be treated with Derbak soap and a fine tooth comb. My mother was horrified when she heard because she had always been very careful to keep us clean but I was fortunate because some of the children had their hair cut off close to the scalp. Whether this was because they were badly infested or their hair was too tangled and dirty to receive the combing treatment or some other reason I never discovered. I had strict instructions after that not to allow my head to come close to others in class and never to use anyone else’s comb. The message sank in and even to this day I stick to this rule.
The winter of 1939/40 was exceptionally hard, and in many other areas country from mid January roads and farms became inaccessible through snow and this situation continued until the 23rd. On the 17th the Thames froze over and on the 20th 120F was recorded in London. The 27th saw the worst storm of the century in the country and by the 30th numerous regions again reported that roads were blocked by snow and this weather continued on into the first week in February. But as a child one of the pleasures of icy weather then were the fantastic patterns which frost made on the windows and long icicles hanging from gutters.
During the winter we were sent out at weekends to gather enough wood to start a week’s fires at home. Prospect Park, reached by walking up Tilehurst Road, was a good place to search for fallen wood especially when the weather was too dreadful to search in the woods. There was plenty of fallen wood in the park because few people went there in winter. After a fall of snow, the grass sparkled in the morning sunshine, and I left a trail of footprints which allowed me to imagine there was no one else out and about.
At school the classroom floors were stepped up from the first row to the back, as they had been when ’Baby’ went to school all those years ago. Each row was about 6 inched higher than those in front and everyone could see the blackboard and could be seen by the teacher.
I sat in the second row from the back and the girl sitting behind me was a terrible pest and a cheat either leaning over my shoulder to see my answers or digging me hard in the back and hissing ‘what's the answer to number 3‘. One time, feeling fed up with this treatment I turned and whispered angrily ‘Stop it’ and this was noticed by the teacher. Calling me out to the front he accused me of cheating which I denied. The punishment, he said, was to receive three whacks across the palm with a ruler and I held my hand out for punishment. A knock at the door and a pupil arrived with a note saying I had to see the doctor immediately so I was excused the punishment.
When we had been evacuated a year Doris decided she would teach me to knit and out came a thick pair of needles and off white cotton yarn and she showed me how to cast on, knit and cast off. From then on it was my task to knit a cotton square for the washing up whenever one was needed which was about once a month. Later she taught me to crochet. At school the girls took needlework class and our first lesson was learning to darn socks! I must have been good at this tiresome task because I won a small prize, a coral necklace. This soon broke and when next Dad visited I gave it to him and asked him if he could mend it for me. It disappeared into his coat and that was the last I saw of it. Next we each made ourselves a night dress out of a flower sprigged cotton material and because the school had no sewing machines all the seams had to be sewn by hand. It did good service for a couple of years and I was still wearing it when we returned to London.
Apart from walks alone along the Thames and in the woods what really impressed me with the beauty of the countryside was a class visit, one late September afternoon in ‘39. Streatley (about 10 miles from Reading) and Goring are on opposite sides of the Thames and are joined by a bridge crossing the Thames. The crossing at Goring is an historic Roman and pre-Roman crossing point being the point at which the Icknield Way and the Ridgeway cross the Thames. Here the Thames then runs through Goring Gap which divides the Chilterns from the Berkshire Downs. The steep chalk hill rises up behind the pretty village of Streatley and is dotted with juniper trees.
We arrived at the foot of Streatley Hill on a warm summer’s day and it seemed, as we approached that it was going to be a near vertical climb and there was no path. As I climbed I was forced to cling on to tufts of grass and other wild plants to keep myself from slipping on the grass and sliding back down the hill.
Nearing the summit the way seemed even steeper and difficult and I had to take several rests to catch my breath. It seems strange now that no one had told the school that I should not take strenuous exercise.
At the top I sat gasping for breath and looked out at the view. The Thames, a tiny silver ribbon began far away in the distant smoky haze on the horizon. It meandered its way past villages and lush green water meadows where cattle grazed, and trees studded the fields and copses and the river bank. The fields around lay like uneven coloured handkerchiefs of green, gold and bronze, all stitched together by hedgerows and oak and ash thickets and winding lanes. Sprinkled about here and there were hamlets, farm buildings, woods, churches, cattle, sheep and field workers.
The silver ribbon, sparkled in the sunshine and wound its way, and, as the river curved this way and that, appeared and disappeared and sometimes was only seen momentarily as a glint of reflected sunlight. I felt as though I was Gulliver viewing Lilliput. It was a journey to another world which I have never to forgotten and returning, 60 years later, I found the memories of that time brought tears to my eyes.
We had each brought lunch but not wanting to lose the magic of the moment I sat apart from the others and ate mine, not wanting to taking my eyes off the view or to lose what seemed a very special moment in my life.
Another memorable school trip during the following summer was a visit to an area of the Thames which had been cordoned off for swimming. We swam and lazed on the grass and played games, and the girls made daisy chains and picked wild flowers which the teacher identified for us.
Gradually the streets of Reading started to fill with groups of young men in uniform who, generally, seemed to be enjoying themselves. Apart from our own service uniforms we later became used to seeing uniforms of the Free French, the Poles, Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians. Eventually unmarried women were called up into the women's services so that it seemed everyone wore one uniform or another. ATS, WAAFS, WRENS, ARP, Land Army, WVS and the jobs which were once held by men, driving and conducting buses, train guards, heavy and light industry factory workers, labourers, window cleaners, railways workers were filled with women, and many women began wearing more practical trousers. Until then women were rarely seen in them.
Women manned the ack ack guns, handling the ammunition, and loading the guns and aiming them but because they were non-combatants it was a man who had to fire the gun.
Battle Hospital in Reading, just along Oxford Road from the school, was used for wounded servicemen who were frequently seen in their uniforms of blue jacket and trousers, white shirt and red tie.
We were encouraged to go out on Saturdays regardless of the weather, to get us out from under their feet, I suppose. Naturally my brother didn’t want to hang around with me and I found these were days when I could do as I wished with no restraints from anyone and I took advantage of the opportunity to run, climb trees and swing on gates. Despite my unhappiness at home during those early days of the war the memory of so many happy days spent free and alone in the Berkshire countryside were some compensation.
Saturdays would often start with a trip to buy 2 penn’orth of broken biscuits from Sainsbury in Reading. Biscuits arrived in the shops in large tins about a foot square which contained a single variety. As they were weighed out and packaged some were broken and these collected at the bottom of the tin and were collected in a separate tin and off sold cheaply. The collection was made up of several varieties of biscuits, both sweet and plain and the amount which two pence would buy depended on the generosity of the assistant who served you. Some could be very generous and gave as much as half a pound for tuppence. The biscuits were usually sufficient to provide us with food for our day out since we were never given lunch when were away on these excursions.
We went home for the Christmas holiday in 1939 and found that our parents had moved to a small flat at 2 Hollar Road just off the High street but not far from 128. So many people had left London at the start of the war that house owners were pleased to let out flats for a lower rental. My parents paid 15 shillings a week for 3 rooms comprising two bedrooms, a kitchen and toilet. Forty years later my father was still paying the same amount for what had become a rent controlled little flat.
We had not been home since the evacuation in September and not only was the flat at Hollar Road a novelty but it felt strange to approach Nan’s house and see all the windows criss-crossed with brown paper strips. All the streets seemed strangely quiet and seemed deserted at times for there were few men and children in London and little for us to do so we spent much of the holiday at Nan’s.
The winter of 1939/40 was one of the harshest on record and the cold prevented us going out and about so we had choice but to read, and play games and records. The records were old and the only song I can remember was ‘Rio Rita’, from a 1926 Ziegfield musical. The gramophone, an old wind-up one with a large trumpet, was a new acquisition left behind by someone who could not pay their rent and had made a moonlight flit.
Because chickens and turkeys were in short supply that year Christmas dinner was a leg of pork. Still, it was wonderful to be home again, even if only for a short time.
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