SUMMARY AND PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT
DOB: 23 July 1933
‘I was born in Edmondstown… at home in Edmondstown… We were five children – I had two brothers older than me and two sisters younger than me. I can remember vividly when my father told me we were at war, because we had a big wireless now on top of the chest of drawers by the wall that goes behind the stairway and we used to have to take batteries down there and always had to make sure, to keep the batteries topped up… I was about six but I can remember yeah yeah…
My father was working with the Cilely Colliery… an ostler with the horses… always worked nights… he’d walk down there, had to go down the track and Cilely was down in the woods there. We could always tell the time by when the men were coming home and when the men were coming on shift, didn’t have to have a clock in those days.’
Q – CAME HOME TO HAVE A BATH?
‘Oh yes, yes’ [LAUGHS]
Q – CAUSE A LOT OF WORK?
‘Oh yes, oh I should smile [LAUGHS]… and you know he’d come ‘ome filthy dirty and he’d always have his food before he had his bath my father, and my mother always kept us up to see my father, we never went to bed early us kids, and always waited until Daddy come ‘ome, and always had a bath after he had his food, and I remember my mother would always put the Echo newspaper down so he didn’t dirty the table cloth, e’d wash ‘is ‘ands an’ that, but bath was always after us kids had gone to bed.
We had an old-fashioned fireplace so my mother used to always have a bucket of water ready for when my father come home, you know, ready for him to have a bath.’
Q – NOT MUCH PRIVACY AROUND IN THOSE DAYS?
‘No, I think that’s why my mother used to say; ‘After you’ve had your supper now and Daddy’s ‘ad his supper you go off to bed now.’’
Q – WHAT SCHOOL DID YOU GO TO AUDREY?
‘Williamstown, and I can remember my first day at school vividly. I think I was only about three and a half to four. I can remember my mam taking me in and there was this big rocking horse! That sticks vividly in my mind and that was my first day at school.’
Q – YOU REMEMBER ANY TEACHER?
‘Miss Harris… and years, years later, we landed up in hospital together, and she was telling me that I was a good little girl and all this business [LAUGHS]… she lived in Penygraig Miss Harris.’
Q – WHAT SORT OF GAMES DID YOU PLAY AS A KID?
‘Ooooh, well my favourite… we lived… down the road was a gas lamp and my favourite was having a piece of rope and swinging round you know, and there were not many buses in them days – you knew what time the buses were coming – so we’d have tennis in the street, we’d have Scotch on the pavement, and it was great, and I can honestly say we had more fun than the kids do now… I can honestly say, and I’m not being big-eaded, I was a good little girl, I was, I weren’t naughty. The only thing was, that I didn’t like when I was a kid, and I know you’re going to laugh at this, but my name was Audrey May and my mother used to come out the door and she’d say ‘Audrey May! In ‘ere!’’, and oh I used, I used to feel awful when my mother called me Audrey May [LAUGHS], ‘Come on!, you know, In!’ [LAUGHS]. ‘Lovely memories when I was a child… lovely memories, lovely’.
04:30
Q – SO YOU CAN REMEMBER THE FIRST DAY OF WAR?
‘Yes I can remember my father telling me ‘Now, we’re at war, and he was trying to tell me, trying to tell us what was going to happen. I was a daddy’s girl see, a proper daddy’s girl and he was trying to tell us what was going to happen and we all had to go down the school... and we got gasmasks. [TALKS OF HER BABY SISTER WITH A BABY’S GASMASK WHICH SHE WAS LAID IN AND SHUT IN].
Always carried it on your shoulder to school, you all had to like, it was naughty if you didn’t take it to school, I remember that.’
05:00 ‘One particular air raid I remember vividly and what happened, the boy next door got drowned, Donald Brooks his name was, and he got drowned in the feeder at Cilely Colliery. And I can remember the day… I was about eight or nine... I was in the higher school then. I remember we had an air raid and used to have to go to Mrs Turner’s house… Number two, School Street, if you had an air raid you had to go to somebody’s house [YOU WOULDN’T GO HOME?] No you was allotted different houses near the school and I had to go to Mrs Turner at number two. Well the day of the funeral now there happened to be an air raid coming but I can remember now Turner let us come to the door to see the cortege pass and all the boys from the school walking behind… and then of course I remember the landmine dropping and how it missed Cilely Colliery I’ll never know, never know! Because Cilely Colliery’s here, then there were a kind of a ‘tump (?) then there was path and a bit of a field , and the landmine dropped there… that must’ve been about 1942-43? Nighttime raid and my father was in work! We had a big table in the middle of the kitchen but also under the stairs one of these bed chairs you could pull out with all cushions on, and if we had an air raid she’d put us in there but I don’t know what happened this night, we weren’t in there and I can remember now the noise was terrible and all the windows shaking! And my mother just threw us all under the table you know. How it missed the colliery I’ll never know! ...And my father was working in there!’
[NEXT DAY THE KIDS ALL WENT UP TO SEE THE BIG HOLE FROM THE BOMBING]
08:00 DAD WAS ARP. ‘On the weekend, he’d go out to ARP like you know, and I can remember they used to come practice on the Sunday morning see… and where we lived they had a little green in front and then out of the door one Sunday morning there was a man laying on the green and a man said to me ‘Don’t talk to him he’s meant to be dead!’ [LAUGHS] Yeah I gotta lot of memories of the war.’
Q – WHAT ABOUT THE BLACKOUT – DO YOU REMEMBER THEM?
08:14 ‘Oh Gosh yes, my grandmother lived at the bottom of the street and she used to come up every Saturday night, Mrs Burman… and then my mum used to take her home and you know you couldn’t have a torch… I don’t know she managed, she used to take her home in the black and sometimes I used to go with my mother, but one fright I had in the blackout, it was my brother, horrible he was, it was when there was the prisoner of war escaped from Bridgend? I didn’t go down with my mother this Saturday night to take my gran home, and my brother he went out somewhere, and he was some three years older than me, and he come racing into the passage and started talking German! And I thought ‘Oh my God! The prisoners had broken into my house! [LAUGHS] It was brother w’un it!’
GIs STATIONED AT PENRHIWFER
09:00 ‘And I can remember the GI, they were over in Penrhiwfer, in the big field… where the roundabout is now… they were in a big camp there you know, for about two or three days you know and all the girls were walking up there arm in arm with the GIs you know… they found plenty of local girls, my cousin was one of them I can see ‘er now… but there was one girl, living about ten doors down from me she eventually married one of the GIs and she went out there to live yeah, I can remember that…
I think what happened, they were there one minute, got up the following morning and they were gone, but it was all over in Penrhiwfer on the field they were.’
ON RATIONING
10:00 ‘Oh yes we didn’t have sweets and chocolate like they do now isn’t it, and clothing coupons, again you couldn’t go anywhere unless you had coupons to buy – I think it was very hard for my mother and father really cos there was four of us with four of us then cos my youngest sister was born later, but I think it was very hard you know. But there we are… We were healthier then than we are now. I think so.
Q – DID YOU EVER GO OUT SHOPPING OR WAS IT ALL LEFT TO YOUR MOTHER?
‘No I went out once with my brother. I used to go down the Coop with my mother but I can remember now they were selling something in Tonypandy, I think it was flour, and my mother said, ‘Right now, you and your brother Emrys go down and stand in the queue separate like, and go in separate , but me of course being young, came to my turn and the gentleman said to me, ‘what do you want now then?’ and I said ‘I want the same as my brother!’ and he said ‘there’s only one to a family.’ [LAUGHS] I gave the game away… I think it was to make bread [LAUGHS], well when I come back I had it off my mother didn’t I – ‘Why did you say you were with your brother!’
11:30 ON MEALS
‘Well we’d have porridge for breakfast, and then we’d have a sandwich or something for dinner if we were home although sometimes we’d have school dinners. But then my mother always used to make a lot of stew – and she’d have a rabbit and she’d make a lovely rabbit stew you know… basically out of nothing and then we’d have a lovely meal.
HAD AN ALLOTMENT ‘and my father kept chickens… the only thing was when he used to kill the chickens used to break our ‘earts! [LAUGHS] …and pigeons …I’ve stood for hours out the back with the tin going ‘Gub, gub gub’ getting the pigeons in… but you know we done alright, fair play, we done ok, I think so anyway. My mother and father were wonderful how they coped, but oh you couldn’t have sweets, well you would have sweets but very very few and far between.’
Q – WAS IT AN EXCITING TIME?
PAUSES – TONE CHANGES ‘Well – No, not really no. From a little girl I was very, how can I say, I used to feel sorry for people and things like that, and another thing I used to have to do, I used to write letters – my grandmother couldn’t read or write – now her youngest – my mother’s youngest brother was in the war, an’ I used to have go down there and write letters to her son, he was in the eighth army with Monty, and I used to have to write letters for her to her son because my grandmother couldn’t read or write. She used to earn a living by taking in washing. She took in washing until she was nearly ninety, and I used to have to take it all back on a Friday and Saturday you know. But I, I can’t I can’t say they were awful unhappy times because there were happy times, everybody – PAUSE – clung together then didn’t they.’
13:29 ‘I can remember Lord Haw Haw on the wireless, saying he was going to bomb certain places, certain nights, you know. We used to stay up and listen to that!… We couldn’t stay up every night but a couple of nights we were allowed to stay up and we thought that was great like! Listening to Lord Haw Haw innit! Fantastic. [CHUCKLE]
Q – CAN YOU REMEMBER THE END OF THE WAR?
‘Oh yes, yes, I can remember the VE oh it was lovely, I can remember one of my mother’s brothers, my uncle was a policeman in Newport and I can remember of we had a huge bonfire up on the football field, and my uncle was there, my uncle Jim Cayman, he organised it all, and all the singing, oh I can remember it all, oh it was lovely, lovely it was… everybody clung together then… everybody didn’t have much but they made us tea out of next to nothing, all us kids had a party.’
Q – HOW LONG DID THE CELEBRATIONS LAST?
‘Oh about two days! – yeah, then for us kids; you didn’t see nobody drunk or things like that… it was different celebrations to what it is now… and then when the prisoners of war come home… there was a gentleman next door to us who was a prisoner of war in Japan, I can remember his homecoming. His mother made him all toffee apples for us and we were all sat out at the front waiting to see ‘im when he come ‘ome, oh it were lovely…
He looked very thin and things like that, but he couldn’t get over, everybody‘d come out! He come ‘ome by bus and he got off at the Black Diamond and there we all were, all cheering, yes it was lovely and I can remember that as well.’
ENDS