Well, after all these years I have a confession to make. `Twas I that pulled the bung out of the emergency water barrel in the playground between the Infants and Primary girls sections in 1943!

Feels good getting that off my chest. There was water eve.......rywhere!!! and Miss Apps went absolutely bonkers!! HeHeHe. :-)

Water was vital after an episode that happened in Southsea. German bombers came over one day during daylight and dropped high explosive bombs on all the major crossroads.That night they returned with incendiary which ignited most of Elm Grove and the shops at Osborne and Palmerston Roads.

The poor old firemen had no water in the broken water mains so they had to pump water from the sea, a long way away. The Rescue and firefighters were the real heroes in those days.

In the morning break at school, Miss Bird would hand out half pint bottles of milk. Have you gone metric yet? They had a little cardboard disc sealing them which you pushed in. We were all pretty heavy handed so most of the milk used to spray all over us! Sticky and greasey!! yuk! No wonder my dog Chip used to lick me half to death when I got home smelling like a chunk of cheese, I`m sure!

Practically everything was rationed during the war.

We had ration books with coupons in them which the shopkeeper would cut out and keep. We had one big roast dinner a week on Sunday. I was sent to Mr Smith`s, a butcher in Milton Road near Priory Crescent, to get our scrawny shrivelled up piece of meat. Some times there was none left so we had to make do with whale meat!! It looked like liver,and tasted like fish.Yukkk! Or breadcrumbed sausages made from bread and a liquid that a bloomin` chook (chicken) had trotted through!

Boots and clothes were constantly repaired to make them last a long time. Dad used to repair my boots. Sometimes he couldn`t get leather, so for a while we used to put cardboard in them just to seal the holes.

My mum used to worry about what people would think. "Always sit in the back row at church so nobody can see the holes!!" There was always a crush of kids fighting for the back row, during the leather shortage!

Food was pretty scarce so bomb sites were cleared and fruit and vegetables grown on them. I remember "scrumping" apples from trees hanging over the lane off Winter Road, and onions, blackberries from the corner of Locksway Road. When I left there was a barbershop there. We got caught once by a policeman. He gave us a lecture, then a whack under the ear just to reinforce what he had said.

My dad had a "magic" head light for his bike. It had a huge glass lens at the front and on the top a little water tank. At the bottom was a tiny door where he would put in a piece of sodium (ask teacher?). He`d open a tap and the water would drip down onto the sodium creating a gas. Then he`d light the gas. Sometimes there would be a big BANG!! and Dad would end up with soot on his nose and eyebrows!!

At school there would be various games that would come and go: spinning tops, folded aeroplanes,conkers. So many but great fun at the time.

In the playground sometimes we would watch vapour trails high up in the sky towards the south - heaps of them, twisting and turning, and also a rattling sound. We thought this great! We found out later they were Spitfires and German planes fighting somewhere over the Solent.

We would go to Portsdown hill and walk up to Pigeon House Lane and the woods to collect primroses,bluebells, and foxgloves.

We would bring a chunk of chalk back to mark Alverstone Rd with make-believe railway tracks. On which we`d belt up and down on one roller skate. We always shared our good fortune on owning a pair!! There many major rail disasters in Alverstone Road when rain washed our tracks out, I can tell you!

When it did rain we had boat races. Little boats with masts made out of match boxes which we`d float (or sink!!) down the gutters full of rainwater Many of these mighty ships disappeared down drains.

It`s been great recalling these memories for me. I just hope it`s given you all some insight into our past times. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me..
Please do this via the feedback - we will forward. Ed.