Evacuee

Here is my Mum, two days before her 76th birthday, standing in front of where the house was where she lived during the war. Her family lived in Acton, and her and her sister were due to be evacuated. My Poppa was in the Air Force, and my Nana didn't want my Mum and Auntie Dora to be evacuated, figuring, 'if anything happens to me, who will look out for them?' She decided they would all take their chances together, and moved to Safron Walden.

Mum says the time spent there was the happiest of her whole childhood. She told us a great story of how her mother (who was a real maverick) woke them up at midnight one Christmas Eve, as it was snowing. They lived right by the village green and they put their coats on over their pyjamas and ran out on to the green to built snowmen. They ended up having a snowball fight with the American Soldiers from the nearby Hadstock base who were just piling out of the Cross Keys pub, until about two in the morning.

She had a lovely childhood, roaming around the village with so much freedom. She told us about running wild through the fields of the local farms, playing outside all day in the school holidays, how during the war there were so few adults around to tell them what to do they just did what they liked, and how free they were.

I used to play out in the street all the time, I ran with a pack of kids from my street, we had so much fun and freedom. When I tell Betsy about it she is jealous; but it's nothing compared to how my Mum grew up.

One of my favourite songs of all time is Itinerant Child by Ian Dury. I always wished I had the guts to give my kids that kind of childhood, little did I realise that my Mum (of all people) pretty much had it.