Growing up as the child of a single mother in London from 1943

I was born in Forest Gate Hospital on 11 October 1943. I remember virtually nothing of the actual war but want to speak up for all those who suffered the impact of the war, which resulted in family breakups.

My mother was about to get engaged when war broke out. Her fiancé joined up and found someone else, leaving my mother stranded as a single parent. In 1943, it was a skeleton locked in a cupboard. As a result, I never knew my father. Mother stayed single. She was a wonderful mother.

She was going to marry an Irish sapper whom she met at a dance. She married him and discovered three months later that he was a bigamist. After the court case at the Old Bailey, she got three months in prison. My mother said she would never marry again. She had to face magistrates wanting to take me away.

Mother worked in the telephone exchange in Headen Hall. We lived in a one-room flat in Leyton E10. I was taken in at Knott's Green Day Nursery daily. I was the youngest child there and was looked after by Matron White and Nurse Jackie.

The flat was upstairs, and my mother had to carry the pushchair up and down the stairs. I remember my mother pushing me down Catworth Street. There was a breeze block factory around the corner, and the men who worked there (I was told they were German POWs) would call out to my mother, "lovely baby," or something like that.

After 1945, we moved to a downstairs flat further along the street in a 1901 house. The scullery had a butler's sink where we washed ourselves as well as cooked. A zinc bath was brought in every Friday night for a bath in front of the fire. To wash the clothes every Monday, my mother used a rubbing board, Sunlight soap, and Reckitt's Blue.

As a toddler, I would go to the larder. Often it was empty except for the brown tin of dried egg. I would dip my finger in it and treat it like sherbet.

I remember when we had meat, it was lights, whale blubber, sausages, and Yorkshire pudding as a treat. Occasionally, my mother would sing to me "Because" by Jan Kiepura, whose record she had with a wind-up gramophone. Also, my granny used to sing to me when I was very small, sometimes hymns like "There is a Green Hill Far Away."

As a child, I remember being frightened by the bombers that used to scream overhead. I remember hiding in the skirts of my mother and Auntie Daisy, who had her own children as well and cared for me during school holidays.

I always remained extremely grateful that my mother brought me up with principles to know right from wrong and taught me a whole range of domestic skills from laying the table, lighting the fire, hanging out washing, darning socks, and more.