We Lived At 3 Chapel End With Mrs Crook

A Memory of Akeley.

I was evacuated aged 5 years old to Akeley during the war with my mother. I can remember going to the school on the village square and being allowed to play in the field behind when the weather was fine. My friends were two brothers and a sister from the Jones family living next door at no 2. We used to raid the farmer's orchard for apples until he came running out shouting and chasing us. I can't recall
if he ever managed to catch us. What a miserable, bad tempered old man he was or so it seemed. Opposite our house was the Chapel where every Sunday we would listen to the singing of the congregation - it appeared to me that they sang the very same hymns every week. It was a happy place for me to live but not for my mother who often cried which, I didn't realise until I was older, was due to the effects of the war going on. When I returned to London the war was still raging and our house was bombed in 1944 - we were in the airraid shelter at the time so fortunately we all came out the other end. Some memories are so vivid.