Hitler Gives us Another Week's Holiday

We'd had our usual five weeks school holidays when Hitler's Luffwaffe gave us another few days off. His bombers scampering back to the continent, after presumably bombing Midlands cities, jettisoned another, on Glebe land behind the school. The school was not directly hit, but the explosion shattered a few windows. 'HOORAY', another week off school. As far as we kids were concerned, the repairs could take forever, but in reality, it took just a week. Another abiding memory of Flitwick is of the old pond and the smithy next to the school. Neither exists any more, but when horse and cart moved goods around Flitwick, the smithy was kept busy shoeing those horses and I enjoyed leaning over the half door and watching him at the anvil. There was always something to linger over and watch around the pond, and when I eventually got home, Mum would give me a walloping on my backside for being so late. In those days, the school in Dunstable Road had two playgrounds, split by the low building which housed the old bucket lavatories, ooh!! what a pong. Rationing in 1943 caused my mum a lot of worry. Shortage of this, and that, and with little money, she could hardly afford to buy on the black market. One day she was highly delighted when she went to Bedford market and found 6 plain white cups, you'd have thought she'd found a rainbow full of pots of gold. To keep our old range going, and with not enough coal, friends and neighbours, including my mum, raided the railway line for those nuggets of black gold which fell off the coal trucks as they made their way to Everards, and Franklin's coal yards. I hope you have enjoyed reading of my little trip down memory lane, full version of memories in 'Fields of Cabbages', my book of a Flitwick village now vanished. Maureen Kerr (nee Randall), now living in Crook of Devon, near Kinross, Scotland.