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Margaret Flynn emailed us: Had a look at your site and found it interesting. Wondered if these memories would interest anyone.
My earliest memories are of growing up in Handsworth, Birmingham and of the Rookery Road where the everyday shopping took place. There was the Co-op where almost everyone got the groceries; Quances the pork butcher who made lovely scratchings; and Teddy Haynes for fruit and veg late on Saturday night. I still remember asking for two pennyworth of specs, which was the damaged fruit.
The weekend shopping was done on the Soho Road, which had the larger stores like Woolworth's and Peacocks. I also had my tonsils out at the clinic on Soho Road: they kept me in just one night, and then I was pushed home in my younger brother's pram, embarrassed and with a very sore throat.
I went to Rookery Road School and to the cinema opposite, but I cannot remember its name.
When war was declared we were all gathered around the radio, and I can still hear my mom's words of God help us. We experienced quite a few air raids and slept in the Anderson shelter in the garden of Farcroft Grove.
On one particular November night the sirens had gone but we hadn't had time to get to the shelter. My eldest sister was on night duty, nursing at Western Road Hospital. My younger brother and sister and I were under the dining room table. Mom had just returned from the kitchen, getting us a drink of water, when we heard a great whoosh and she was covered from head to foot in thick black soot!
ARP men helped us all into the shelter together with the lady from next door, a Mrs Tame. When dawn broke, Mom and Mrs Tame peeped out to survey the damage and were dismayed to see they both had only half a house each and our kitchen was just rubble. The houses in Farcroft Grove, which was a cul-de-sac, were semi detached and the bomb had landed between the two, demolishing half of each, making them unsafe and unliveable.
Although neighbours rallied round to help, we lived in the air raid shelter for three months until a house was found for us in Erdington, and a new lot of childhood memories formed.
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