Don McDouall was evacuated from London during World War II when he was five years old. He was sent to the small country village of East Hanney to live with Grans and Grampy at a house called Tamarisk. He now lives in Australia.

It was sometime in November 1941, that Grans took in two lodgers. The front room was let to a man and his teenage daughter. The man and girl were Spanish and most likely were refugees from the Spanish civil war. The daughter went to the local school. Her name was Isobelle. She was probable about thirteen years old and had masses of very long black curly hair.

Roy and I never really got to know her but I use to admire her as Isobelle didn't like Grans and made no attempt to hide her dislike. I thought Isobelle was very brave and I idolised her.

The Spanish man was a dead ringer for Arthur Askey. He was a gifted artist excelling at painting miniature landscapes. One such painting hung in a tiny frame on the wall in the passageway leading to the front door of Grans house.

The man from Spain and his daughter Isobelle left the village and were replaced very quickly by a very mean old man who hailed from the nearby town of Faringdon. Every Saturday morning he was seen to alight onto the ten o'clock double-decker bus that went to Oxford to the public baths. This was an expected requirement as there was no bath at Grans place.

The new lodger detested Roy and me and would quickly strike either one of us with his walking stick if we got to close. He was the first person I ever saw put jam on his potatoes! Most food at the time was on the ration. Roy and I never saw sugar, cheese, butter or even margarine but this mean old man use to have it all. His own rations set out in front of me on the table at each meal time.

As part of our daily chores we were expected to clean this mans room each day. Then empty his 'po' and the 'commode' if he had used it, which he often did and then make his bed. The lodger had many things of interest on his dressing table. Many of these objects were of great appeal to small boys like me.

One particular item, which both of us coveted in a very big way, was a small silver handled penknife. To me this small knife was something marvelous. I would pick it up and open it every time that I was in the man's room. Roy I know was just as keen on the knife as I was, so we stole it.

We played with the knife all the next day taking turns to cut things with it. Then because we couldn't take it home with us we buried it in Mr Whites field. We dug up a square of turf and put the knife, wrapped up in newspaper, under it.

Probably a week passed by and we had forgotten all about the knife when suddenly out of the blue we were confronted by a very irate, belt wielding Grans. She beat both Roy and I into confessing that we had taken the knife. Then to make things worse for us Grans told our school teachers what we had done.

Miss Smith scolded us both and asked us where the knife was, so then we had to go and get it. Try as we might we couldn't find the blasted thing. We spent all that day looking but no knife. Eventually Gramps came out to the field, which by now looked like an army of moles were living there and took us home. This was long after it was dark.

Gramps protected us from Grans that night but we got a really harsh belting the next morning. We never found the knife, its probably still there buried in that field!