Our Sunday Roast

In early 1945 I was three years old. My mother and I had been evacuated to Wales but were now back in the East End of London as my father was still serving in the Royal Fusiliers. One Sunday lunchtime my grandparents were up at the local pub. Mum had just taken the Sunday roast out of the oven and put it on the kitchen table to cool. At this point, I should say we were lucky to have a roast, but Grandad worked at Smith Field Meat Market, so that explains that. As Mum put the joint on the kitchen table she heard the sound of a doodlebug, when the engine cut out she knew it was coming down. Grabbing me she got under the sturdy kitchen table. The doodlebug came down a couple of streets away, but the explosion shook our house. When we came out from under the table, flakes of whitewash from the ceiling had covered the Sunday joint. It couldn't be wasted, so Mum cleaned them off with a tea towel and we had our Sunday dinner as normal when my grandparents came home from the local pub. This is one of my earliest memories.

My second memory concerns my father returning from the war in the summer of 1945. By then my mother and I were sharing a house with another family in Bow. We had the upstairs of the house, and I remember my mother telling me to watch out of the window for a soldier coming down the road as it might be my dad. When he arrived I didn't know him. He gave me some chocolate, but later on, I was upset because I was made to sleep in a single bed in another room, whereas I'd been used to sharing my mother's bed.