Dear LPG,

I was recently asked to write a bit about my childhood and I wondered how typical it was of other people of my age.  I think that one of my major memories would be that of living through the war.  My brother was about eighteen months older than me.  By the time I was about five years old we had become quite used to the sound of the air raid siren, and although it was rather scary I have to smile when I remember my mother’s routine for preparing for a stint in the Anderson shelter ibn the back garden.

 Our shelter was half exposed with the top three or four feet above the ground.  I suppose there was nothing particularly special about it. My Dad was in the navy and my mother, brother and I lived with my grandparents.

 When that sound started up my brother and I would make a direct charge for the shelter with our Grandmother right behind us. The shelter door was not too secure so my grandad had made a contraption out of an old oven, chicken wire, and a few other security essentials and, at the start of the long air raid tone, he would start rigging that up.   He was sure that it would stop any bombs from affecting our house and it did provide a closed door for us. 

My Mother had her preparation regime down to a fine art.   She would gather her essentials: -

1,         with one hand she would be clutching her special steel safety box with its contents – the family birth certificates, ration books, insurance papers and other important documentation.

2,         she would have the budgerigar’s cage in the other hand

3,         under her arm there would be half a loaf of bread, some margarine and a tub of jam for when we got hungry

We slept with our gas masks at the ready and our rubber gum shields in our mouths in case there was a bang in the night.  These were designed to stop anyone waking up with a start and biting into their tongues.

We spent quite a bit of time in there and , we felt quite safe in spite of what we could hear outside, the lessons learned from stepping out (on hearing the ‘all clear’) and seeing the often devastating  results of what had happened during our stay; not to mention the fact that the door was not that secure.

But I can still see my Mum now, waddling into the shelter carrying all the said items so that we were prepared for any eventuality.