Life in London and its suburbs of had become increasingly uncomfortable by 1942 and more and more children were being rehomed away from the capital and other large cities and, in truth, from anywhere that might attract the attentions of the Luftwaffe. Our parents decided that the time had come to think about evacuating my brother and me. We were to go to the Fen country which so far had attracted little attention from the bombers. My father had farming cousins living near March and they had a spare bedroom and were willing to take us in. This was to be the start of an extraordinary period in our lives and one which would leave its echoes haunting my life for the next eighty plus years.
Our new temporary home was a small two storey cottage and a tiny Fenland farm the home of just Emma and George since their family had grown and sought life and work further afield. I am sure that I must have felt considerable anxiety when my parents drove away, but that is not a memory I carry. Being on a farm was too exciting I suppose. I can still remember the excitement about new smells and new sounds, the scarey sight of the huge farm horse, the enormous pig, the wall- to wall- ducks and chickens and the outside toilet seats which appeared too huge for comfort and were in fact just that! I remember too well the shocking, noisy day when the pig was ringed, but inevitably, our lives settled into a gentle, uneventful, familiar rhythm.
My brother was too young to have started the education pathway, but as the summer ended it was decided that we should both attend the local school. This was a real surprise! There was no building labelled ‘school’, we were to become pupils at the church hall which was next door to the farm. It was a large room full of noise and movement when we first arrived. I was suddenly aware of eyes everywhere. Realising that it was we who were the attraction was a puzzle, but there was no explanation, no one spoke to us. What I next recall was being in front of a small wooden desk clutching a pencil and filling in the answers to pages of arithmetical problems. They were not difficult problems there were just so very many of them eventually. If I ever did anything else at the school, I cannot remember what it was. (Later I heard adults talking and I realised that we evacuees had brought all sorts of problems with us because the school was not equipped with textbooks for reading or learning and the staff consisted of one adult helped by ‘monitors’ who were approaching school leaving age which was still officially 14 at the time.
Another highlight of the evacuation was the day that Aunt Emma showed me how to use the iron! There were several to choose from each with its own place on top of the kitchen range. I was fascinated and eager to learn but the iron was heavier than I expected and it was not long before I had used it on my arm. The resulting blister remained part of my arm for a long time, unnoticed by Aunt Emma or anyone else. My next adventure was being taught how to make butter via the churn. Waiting for the soft flop, flop of the butter was a magical reward for the considerable effort. The dairy had a special smell that I can still recall with pleasure.
The days passed and the war seemed to disappear into another world and had no place in the sugar beet growing fields of Cambridgeshire. I went from 6 to 7 and tried desperately to learn to ride a bike so that I could go up and down the droves with the village kids, but I never managed to ride or to make friends with the locals. Then one glorious day my parents arrived and took us back to London.
The war reappeared and we learned new behaviours. We learned to identify the different notes of the aeroplanes, to listen for the warnings of attacks and where to take cover. My first sight of the notorious V1 Flying Bomb was from the platform of a local train station. We heard the grating noise of the engine and whilst we knew that when the sound disappeared the bomb would fall we were helpless and could only hope that those beneath the bomb were protected.
Life in the suburbs was very different from the life in the Fens. We slept and often ate under the Morrison Shelter which dominated the dining room of my parents semidetached. The unattached house next door had been destroyed earlier in the war and the area was a sea of golden rod and the convolvulus. The summer in those days seemed to me to be full of butterflies.
Sixpenceworth 
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