For the first part of the year everything seemed to go on as normal. I had been made a prefect at school but my voice was breaking so my choirboy days were over. A typical Saturday for me in 1939 would be:-

7.30am    Get up and have breakfast  (Quick Quaker Oats)
8.30         Meet the milkman at the depot and commence work
12.30       Break for lunch.  The milkman bought me a cooked lunch in a cafe
1pm         Recommence milk round
4.30          Back at Depot
5pm          Cooked tea at home - sausages, bacon, egg and fried bread
6pm          Go to one of the local cinemas with my eldest sister and sit in the 6d or 9d seats
9.30          Home and go to bed

During the summer term I was in a party of boys with two teachers who went, for one week in term time, on a School Journey, which was half holiday and half school work. We stayed in chalets at a holiday camp and visited local places of interest including Caley’s chocolate factory in Norwich - trust a boy to remember that part of the trip. We had to pay towards the cost of the School Journey and I used part of my savings from the milk round.

Also during the summer term “Posh” Williams, one of my friends, brought his half plate camera to school. The science teacher explained how it worked and then took a photograph of the class. This was my only group photograph from school and I still have it.

Before we broke for the summer holidays we received instructions which were to be followed if the planned evacuation of children from London was to be ordered by the government. We did not realise it then but some of us were never to meet again.

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With war imminent we reported to our various schools with our spare clothes in cases etc. without knowing where we were to be taken. My mother was very tearful.  Six of her seven children aged 15 (me), 13 (Pat), 11 (Roy), 9 (Yvonne), 6 (Clifford) and 4 (Sylvia) were going away, leaving only my eldest sister (Betty) at home, and , of course, we would not all be going together but with our own schools. I took all my clothes in the kitbag I used for camping but left my other posessions at home.

From my school we walked in pairs in one long column to Waterloo station, follwed by a few parents. There were many other schools at the station but it was well organised and we boarded a train very quickly, more in a holiday mood than anything else. By mid afternoon we had arrived in Exeter where buses were waiting to take us to outlying villages. I was dropped off, with about 30 others, in Starcross, a very pleasant village on the river Exe and billited, together with my friend Ron Williams, with Mr. & Mrs. Avery, a local butcher who had a shop in Dawlish.

Although we shared the village school with the local children, half a day each, it was not equipped to deal with 15 year olds in their last year of secondary education and so we did little normal school work. On the other hand I learnt an awful lot about the countryside.

Mr. Avery kept two young greyhounds, which had their first races whilst we were there, two ferets, a cat and a number of budgerigares. I helped with, and then took over, the daily 8 mile walks with the greyhounds along country lanes which, at first were strange, but, within weeks, had become as familiar as the Walworth Road. They were big strong dogs and I needed all my stength to hold them back when they saw a running rabbit.  Those walks, with only the dogs for company, gave me many pleasant hours of day dreaming especially towards the end of the year when darkness had fallen and the stars were out.  If a Spitfire had flown low over me in daylight, I became a pilot. I was also a farmer, a poet, a musician and an explorer.

The dogs were well fed with meat, which had not yet been rationed and came from Mr. Avery’s shop, and boiled stinging nettles. I soon learnt to pull stinging nettles without being stung and came back from walks with bunches of them.  Their first races were at Exeter in an afternoon trials session and I went with Mr. Avery in his van to watch. They were not very good.

The two ferrets were used for rabbiting and I quickly learnt how to set nets over holes and to pick up and carry a ferret on my forefinger.  With an ear to the ground, after putting a ferret down a hole, you could hear the rabbits running underground then, suddenly, one was in a net.  We sold them for 6d  each.

One of the village lads taught me how to sail a small dingy but I am a landlubber at heart and did not feel at ease in a small boat. Where I did feel at home, however, was at the local village whist drive. I had never before played cards outside the family circle but my parents had taught me to play whist well and, not only did I hold my own in adult company, but I won a prize, much to the consternation of some adults.

In early December, after three months of country life without pocket money from home,  with my one and only pair of trousers looking decidedly tatty and with little schooling taking place I decided to go back to London. Since I last saw my parents in August they had moved to a new four bedroomed Council flat in a block just off the New Kent Road, with a bathroom, separate toilet, kitchen and living room.

So I left my school days behind me and was home for Christmas.