A Happy Childhood

Both sets of grandparents lived in Lowestoft so we were able to visit right through the war years when other people couldn't. I remember hiding under the table wearing tin hats with my maternal grandmother, brother and our uncle who must have been home on leave from the RAF whilst our parents were at the cinema and an air-raid warning sounded. A bomb fell. We wondered whether my parents had been hit and they wondered if we had. The bomb fell between us. It was aimed at the railway station but hit the hotel opposite. The hotel was never rebuilt and there is now a new road past the station and through the grounds of the hotel. On another occasion we slept in the Anderson shelter in the maternal grandparents' back garden. Grandad grew nasturtiums on the roof. After the war there were still restrictions on beach access and there constant reminders of what mines looked like telling us to be careful and to report anything suspicious.