When the war started people hoarded some food before it was rationed, these items included tinned food and sugar.  Rich people found this easier to do as they had the money to spare.   Mum was able to get a few bags of sugar and that was it.   When rationing came we had to manage on what was allowed though I think everybody had some extra from time to time, by fair means or foul. 

As we had the room we had evacuees billeted with us.  The first was Joe Lewis.   He was seven years old and a real tough lad.   He really was more than mum could cope with.   He climbed out of the bedroom window and stood on the windowsill looking in.   This gave mum a fright but worse was yet to come when he hit Den on the head with a belt buckle so hard that the china buckle broke.   The belt was made from folded cellophane wrappers off Players cigarettes and quite a fashion of the day.   After that Joe had to go!   After Joe we had a brother and sister called Jose and Reggie.  Their parents took them back to London after a short while.   Reggie was a big lad of 13 so mum put the tin bath of hot water in the scullery for him to have a bath in.   Some time later she knocked on the door to ask if he was okay.   He told her to come in and mum found him fully clothed, kneeling in the bath with his trousers rolled up to his thighs.   When she told him to undress he asked her to do it for him.   I've no doubt he very much regretted this as mum undressed him and scrubbed him as he had never been before.  It was no more trouble getting him to bath after that.

Jose and Reggie had a cousin called Irish who was billeted in the village and she would often come round to visit them as she was unhappy where she was staying.   When they went back home we had Irish to live with us and we have kept in touch ever since.

At the height of the blitz we had another four people to live with us, these were Brenda Uncle and her mother, who came as an evacuee helper and Doris Nicholls and her mother.   At weekends, the husbands could come down to visit them and to have a night away from the bombs.   This resulted in more cooking for mum and the problem of stretching the rations.   I think they brought with them some items on the black market in order to help mum out.   Doris and Brenda's mother were known as Mum Uncle and Mum Nicholls and my mother was always known as Mum Weston to them.  On one visit, Mum Uncle's husband brought down with him some material.  She then made a dress for each of us out of it.   These were all sewn by hand.

On the day the evacuees arrived in Findon we went up to the school to see them.   It was also the day that mum had made some toffee apples — she must have found some spare time to do that.   The vacees, as we called them, had their own teachers.   They attended Findon School but as it was not large enough for all of us, for a while we would go to school in the mornings and they would go in the afternoons.    Later they went to the recreation room at Washington.   Many of them soon went back to London and some, I believe, joined our school.

In school we would have gas mask drill.   We would wear them during lessons and rude noises could be made by breathing in and out in a certain way.   Our teacher, Mr. Thomas asked the boys to stick strips of paper, criss-cross fashion over the windows.   This was to prevent glass falling down on to us if the windows were broken by bombs or the like.   As the windows were never broken we never knew if this worked.

The boys soon learned the difference between the German planes and our planes.   their games changed from cowboys to soldiers.   When the soldiers moved out of camps round the village, the boys would move in to find any bullets and thunder flashes that may have been left behind.   some were put under Jim Warren's chicken house for use after the war when they couldn't get any more.   That was what they told the court when a group of them were caught and fined!  Considering all the dangerous things they did, only one boy was killed.   He was on his own and hadn't learned the tricks of the trade with the gang.

Mum had a go at breeding rabbits, she kept them in the shed and they would run all over the floor.   Most families kept rabbits to help out with the meat ration.  any spare were sold to Mr. Blackwell, the butcher, for a couple of shillings.

When a German plane was shot down, the airman came down by parachute and landed in a tree in the field where Nightingales Sheltered Housing is now.   A local soldier on leave called to him to come down.   He replied in good English "you come up and get me".   We later saw him go by Rose Cottage sitting in the back of an army lorry from our usual vantage point, the bedroom window.

Several planes came down in the village, then it was a race to see who could get there first, the village boys or the army.   Danger never seemed to enter their heads, it was all excitement to them.