Bomb Alley Kid 2011

Bomb Alley Kid 2011
Title plate created by Ronnie B Goodwin

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Bomb alley kid No 28

                                                              Bomb Alley  Kid  No 28



At last we hear on the radio that the Germans have surrendered,and the war is now over in Europe,so there will be big celebrations,all over  Britain. { except I guess in Wales } because the Germans didnt win and kill all us English, so they wont  celebrate I guess.My Dad says not to be too quick to come home just yet because our house has not been finnished  being re- built just yet,so give it a few more days or  weeks,then we can come home.I will be sorry to leave my two Welsh friends Gorden and Allun,because owing to them my stay wasnt  that bad I suppose. and I would have had a miserable  time here in North Wales without them as friends.When I next see them and tell them that we will soon be going home thay are very happy for me, and say that they are going to move away from this place as well, and are going to live in Porthmadog,  a few days later we hear from my Dad that our house is more or less ready,So Mum says we will pack our things and catch a train on the following Saturday as we have paid for our keep up untill then.I cant wait, and start to pack up my soldiers, and the model planes into the box  that they came in that dad made,Mum packs our clothes into our suitcases, so by the Saturday we are all ready to leave then I  say to mum what shall I do with my little fish. and she says take him and put him back into the river But I want to take him home with me ,so Mum say we can try but he will probbaly die on such a long journey, but I am determined to give it a try.so into his jamjar he goes, in the morning.Allun Gorden and his Mum come to the station to see us off,when the train comes in we find a compartment and open the window  so that we can wave to Gorden Allun and his Mum as the train moves out,I feel a little bit sad as we wave them goodbye.When we arrive at Crew Sation  another  lady joins us in the compartment, and Mum and her sart to talk,this  lady asks about my  little fish, and says I should hang the jar out of the window as the water in his litttle jar must be getting warm,and if I hang it outside the wind will cool it down this is a good idia so I do this  I have to hold onto the jar really tight as the train gathers speed. I Manage this all the way to London where we have to change trains and get into the one that will take us to Canterbury this will only take a two hours from Victoria Station, and we will be back home in Canterbury, I feel kind of strange I cant believe we are really nearly home, when we arrive at canterbury Station my Uncle Jack is there to meet us with a car that I recognise because its the one that was used to pull the fire tender trailer that my dad used to drive for the fire station, its still in the grey colour that I rember,Uncle Jack  tell us he bought it from the council as it wasnt needed any more.so got it for next to nothing, on the way to Jacks Farm we  pass our old house, or as it is now our new house, we are going to the farm so that we can get washed and cleaned up, and my gran will have something for us to eat.after we have eaten and cleaned up I ask if I can go and find my toys that were in the shed that was a store house for our furniture and things,but when I open the big box that the toys are in there are not very many in it.when I ask my Gran where they are she says that probbaly my two cousins John and Ciril have had them to play with,Mum says if thats the case there wont be many left as they break everything,this means that all my trains and railway tracks that dad made for me, and all my dinky cars and everything are no longer there.Mum says there is no point in saying anything to Aunt Flow as she would denigh it anyway.I didnt think that my own realations would do this.so all the railway layouts that dad made, a fort and two really big steam trains  stations Etc are all gone.When we are ready Uncle Jack will take us to our new house, I say I must change the water in the jar for my little fish as he  has lived all the way home,so I take him and the jar down to the gravel pits on jack farm put new clean water in for him.but when we are ready to leave I find he has died.so I am so sad that he has but no one told me that a change of water  would kill him and he should have been left in the  jar and gradualy left to get used to the new water and tempriture, so I put him in a match box and bury him.so my happiness  was a little sad.Anyway I still have my Mum and Dad,which is the  best thing about comming home, but because my dad has to work he cant come home untill  later on as he still works in Chatham with Short Brothers factory,it isnt very long before I meet up with my old play friends Len Smith, and Derek Butler, his brother Allen,and of course their sister Jean.also  Brian Southern, Roger Goodman, but again I have to go to school  as I am only thirteen,but will attend the county modern school up at Hersden, about two miles away but I still have a cycle so we can all cycle together to school,some pupils go by buses others walk .
           Now at last we can all start to regain our old friendships,and I am lucky that my Dad is able to come home and stay at last. New friends will come along.,but this will be another part of my life.after we all leave school,and start to go to work.

Bomb alley kid No 27

                                                                                bomb alley kid No 27


Mum andi start to go on the trains to other places  around Wales ,such as Colwyn bay,Llandudno, Porthmadog,and we sometimes take Gorden and his brother Allun,as they ar good friends of mine and  mums I have had tea with them and they with us, we also go to the cimema together,but I am still not excpted by the majority of the other Welsh  kids,but  who cares.they are not worth bothering with anyway,or that teacherwho still more or less ignors me in classand continues to talk in Welsh to everyoneone, so I am not being tought anything except  to dislike the Welsh.Good news at last,my Dad has written to say he will be able to come  to see us for a few days.as he has some  leave to come,this is great news, and I cant wait to see him,its been so long.One friday night the lady we stay with comes up stairs to  say there is a man at the  door who would like to see her,I my Mum knew all along who it was but said nothing to me,so that it would be a supprise, I hear footsteps on the stairs and assume  its Mum comming back to our room,but when the door opens its My Dad who stands there.I am so happy and throw my arms around him,and burst into tears,because I hav not seen him for so very long my Mum is also in tears, and my  Dad is  also  teafull as well itsa very emotional  time for us all, My dad has two big suit caseswith him and says I can start to open one of them and start to unpack it I start this and find a wooden box  under some of the clothes, it is about eighteen inches square and six inches deep, dad says I can open t and when I do it has many toy soldiers for me,to play with under them is another layer of  cotton wool,and  under this is is a perfect model of an Sunderland Flyingboat painted  in silver paint,and on the side where the registration No. would be, Dad has put the the year that he made it.1944. but thats not all under the next layer there are  two more aircraft,one is a Spitfire, and the other is an American  Mustang fighter all to scale.down to the last thing.Dad says he  made them from Balsawood which  Short brothers use to make up mockup parts for new bits of the  Sunderlands,which are then sent to be made up in aluminium metal for the real plane.I really cant thank dad  enough for these,but he say its for looking after my Mum for him whilst we are apart. but Dad would say this  because thats my Dad,and how he would  dismiss it,but I know  he really was thinking of me.so I will  hang these up on the ceiling  but not play with them as I woulnt like to  breakany of them,while Dad is here we go for walks,and play bowles in the park which make up part of the Square  where we stay which is { No 15 the Square Bleanau Flestiniog } we also go to the cinema or the shed  that they call a cinema,I tell dad that they dont like the English up here, and I only have two friends Gorden and Allun,I also tell about the teacher who wont speak English so I am not learning anything at school.but I know she can speak English if she wants too.Dad says not to worry  or let it bother me  because he thinks the war may be comming close to the end.and is taking a turn for the better.our soldiers and the Americans are taking more and more ground.
                                                           

Monday 14 February 2011

Bomb Alley Kid.No 26

                                                                                bomb alley kid No 26


Enventualy my Mum finds a bed and breakfast house in a little villiage called Bleanau Ffestinog away in the hills, I dont want to go to school anymore,because I am fedup with haveing to make new friends,but once again we pack our cases,and set off to find this little place,having found it,and the l who is about my Mums age and seems very nice,she shows us up to the room which we will be staying,and its quite a big room for a change,and has a nice big bed in it which will make more room for me and mum to sleep,as I still have to sleep with Mum,so this will give us more room, my Mum always puts a pillows down the middle of any bed we sleep in,to seperate us, but this is like haveing a third person in the bed and takes up space.The following day having settled in and unpacked,Mum decides that we should go to the school that I will attend,and meet with the head Mistress, its a very small school,and only has three classes,I have never seen such a small school.its really not much more than a shed with three rooms in it. So on the Monday we go to the school to meet the teacher whose class I will be in,she takes me to the class, and introduces me to the other pupils,she tells them I am English,and then talks in Welsh,so I have no idia what she is saying,anyway Mum leavs me to settle in at my desk, the other pupils the lift up the desk lids, and take out slates, and some chalk I have never seen pieces of slate that one has to write on with chalk,the teacher then goes on to speak in Welsh again,so I put up my hand to say I dont understand Welsh,she then says I will pick it up in time,then some of the other kid start to laugh,its all very embarassing for me, and I feel fed up and miserable by the end of the day,I dont think I will enjoy this school at all.also the children are very hostile towards me,and some even say that they hope the Germans win the war and kill all the English because the English drove them all into the hills,which is known as Wales,what they dont seem to realise is if the Germans did win the war they woulnt stop at the boarder of Wales,they would take over Wales a well, after school some of the kid throw stones at me and call me names,but there are two boys that stick up for me, and these two boys become good friends,they tell me that the kids who throw the stones and call me name are from slate quarry families,and are always a rough lot, During the next few weeks things get slightly better,except for the teacher who still ignores me, and one hour or so a week the whole class go into the another class but I am not allowed in because I am English,Gorden and his brother tell me this is where they are tought about the history of Wales,and to learn Welsh.so I have nothing to do during this time except sit in an empty classroom untill they return,I am begining to hate these Welsh kids except for Gorden and his brother,here in this villiage they have never seen or had an air raid or any bombings let alone seem a German plane, or any dead bodies,except in the local picture house,thats also a laugh as the picture house is just a tin shack,and when it rains which is very often,you can hear it hitting the tin roof. Mum and I go to the so called cinema about three times a week because it passes the the time in the evenings for us,A good bit of news is that my Dad has written to say he maybe able to come up to see us for a few days sometime soon,this is great news, I havnt seen my Dad for nearly a full year now, and even though he wrights to me once a week I still miss him a lot,We also hear on the news that our army, and the Americans further down the French coast have landed in France,again,so lets hope that we can push the Germans army back into Germany,and end this war and we can go home.

Sunday 6 February 2011

Bomb Alley kid No 25

                                                            Bomb Alley kid No. 25



My Mum has found a new place for us to move to at last,through  her friends at work,this new place is called LLan in North Wales,so Mum has written to a hotel there to ask if we  could stay there
untill we  can find another house with a room for us to stay,during the next few weeks we begin to pack and make arrangements  to move ,I cant be bothered with another move even further away from home,Wales is a long way away ,Mum says that up there in Wales they have never had any air raids at all ,and dont know what raids are,so this will be like living before the war, so once again its onto a train with our suitcases after saying goodbye to to the lady we stayed with,and  hope things will get better for her as time goes bye,my Mum says  she must put her faith in God as he always does things for a reason,and some good will come from it sometime in the future,but I am begining  to doubt all this.

          Once again we board a train for somewhere that I have never heard of in this country called Wales.we seem to be traveling on this train all day.I know we have to change trains at a place called Crew up north,we talk to many people on route with this train, but I wish we were heading back home,to my Dad  but instead we are heading further away,and I feel I shall never see much of my Dad  as he wont  be able to travel all this distance for just a weekend,at last we arrive at Crew and change trains for another  station Called Colwyn Bay,where we change trains again for another station called Ffestiniog where this hotel is . At last we arrive tired and half dead. at this little villiage or town, and we can at last wash and clean up,I must its nice to be able to get rid of all the smoke and dirt.we are offered a nice cup of tea by the staff. The little hotel is very old fashioned with big wooden beams,I like the big old grandfather clock that stands in the hall because  it tells the moon phases,the month, { also  tells the time,}  also has very nice chimes as well, at dinner we meet two men in uniform which I have not seen before,at least they speak English  which is  nice as trying to understand the  locals is difficult and they speak amoung themselves, for me.it really sounds very funny, these two men tell us that thy are stationed here as they are  from the London Art Gallery, and the most valuable  painting from  the gallery  these are kept in one of the caves up in the hills,for safe keeping,they say that once we have settled in and feel more at home they will take me and another boy that also stays here up to the mountain with my Mum,to let us see the place.apparently the tempriture in the cave is constant, this is very important as the pictures have to be kept at a constant tempriture to stop them from fadeing  and getting damaged,I am looking forward to this sometime,one of the men says if we think we can walk up to the area he will give us  two   of their crown badges that they wear on their shoulder epaulette,as only the people that work at the London gallery can wear these,he says its a long walk and climb and we wont be able to do it,
so he has thrown us  a challenge.we both recon we can do it,if we do we will get a lift back down  in ther car,so this means we wont have to walk all the way down. { I still have these badges } these two men are really nice to me and Mum and the other lad and his Mum,One nice day we ask if this day will be O K to walk up to see them,and they say  O K and will keep an eye open for us,so they draw a map so that we know which road track to keep on,they say it will will take us about an hour or more to reach the entrance so after leaveing the hotel we set off without Mum as she says she has other things to do that day so with some lunch packs  which have been made up for us we ste off .its a lovlely day  so we take our time and  take rests to eat our sndwiches and to look back to where we have come from,it really is a long way back to see the hotel and villiage,and this is only half way up and we can see for miles over other hills and valleys,but at last we come to  the entrance of the cave,which is cover by two big doors and we wonder how we can  get in do we knock  or what ? but the men must have seen us and open up the doors, Inside the tunnell is lit by electric lights,both men are pleased too that we made it up,and take us into a long tunnell to more doors which they say is where the pictures are kept but we cannot go inside as they would get into trouble if they let us in so they take us to another area of this cavern,it really is amazing how it has all been dug out,now that we have been inside,and shown around it is nearly time for the men to  stop work and return  back to to hotel,they lead into anothjer tunnell  at one point you have to  duck down  to miss the roof  this is a different way to what we came in and I dont like being so enclosed and feel a little scared,but they tell it is all perfectly safe and only a few more yards to the exit but boy am I  pleased to see the exit, I dont like such  enclosed places,I didnt know that I would not be so scared,so as far as I am concerened  its the last and only time I go into a small cave.we  then  get into their car  which  was just outsde  this exit and we drive back to the hotel when we get back  the keep their word and give us the two badges as primised,.actualy it was a very good time, and we enjoyed the day out, We stayed at this Hotel for quite some time,but Mum says we will have tio find somewhere  else to stay as its very expensive to stay here,and my Dad cant keep paying out for us to stay here as he has to pay out for his lodgeings in Chatham ,also I am missing a lot of schooling.and will have to find another school to attend.. 

Tuesday 1 February 2011

bomb Alley kid No 24

                                                                                    Bomb Alley kid  N0 24



        Mum says she is going with the lady that we stay with to see if she can get a job where this lady works,so she will have to make  new friends if she gets this job,so in some  respects we are both in the same boat, and it will be strange untill we settle in here,My Mother has never had to work before,except when she was  a young nurse way back in her twenties. now the day has come when I have to report to this new school,I feel  very nurvous about this, as its is a very large school,and I feel  lost in it,but after a week or two I have been able to make some friends, and  before  long I can meet some after school, and go out to  play with them so I think now I have settled down  with this new place.and also I am one of the gang, there is another  estate  quite close to us,and  in this estate there is another gang,and they have fights with the gang I am in in this estate these fights are really rough,and they throw stones, and things at us,so we  do the same  back to them  but some of them have catapults which gives them an advantage,so we decide to make some of our own,sometimes there are some nasty injuries on both sides as it happends it is our side that usualy wins the fights.I must admit I never knew that thse things went on because it never happend in my village but I must admit I do enjoy battles and trying to hit one of the otherside with a stone  from my catapolt,must say life here is very different  from what I rember at home.I must admit I dont like this estate very much,or the kids that live here,so I dont care  very much if I hurt any of them,perhaps this is oneway of  getting some of my frustration out of my system .My Mum has got a job at a place called Trinly Park, so at least  we have some money comming in to add to what my Dad sends us,and mum buys little things to make us feel  more at home in our room.My Dad sends us letters,  and he seems to be enjoying  this job at Short Brothers,he say he has to deliver lots of  aircrafty parts like wings  and tailplanes  all over the country, and he has made many new friends, He says that the air raids are still pretty heavy,but he says he is  so tired at the  end of the day that he  sleeps through  most of them,He hopes we are enjoying  where we are but misses us very much, but in some respects we are lucky  to be away  where there are no air raids.or not very many. But we must just rember that we can all be togther once this war is over.God willing.   but one day when I come home from school I find my Mother comforting the lady we stay with,she is in a terrible state,the same as Mrs,Rose was when she heard that her son Raymond had been killed in action,now  its this womans husband that has also been killed, and she is holding the  telegram, telling of terrible  bad news.he was killed action in Africa,I can feel for her a  little because I know how I would  feel if the same thing happend to my Dad,Mum say I should go out to play with the boys,and she will call me in in  due course.
           We have now lived with this lady for about nine or ten months, so the sooner we can win this war the better for all of us.Now that she ha lost her husband she says  she will move and go and live with her sister somewhere up north,I hope this means that we may go home now.But no such luck  as dad says our house  has not been re built as yet.so we cant go back home.so what now I think,what will we do,Meanwhile I have moved up one form at this school in Shinfield Estate. so this means that if we move away again I will have to make new friends just as I was getting on with the friends here.I  feel fed up with  having to keep moving  from place to place.