Childhood Memories pt.7

Radio was the mass entertainment of the day. Programmes such as ITMA and Workers Playtime provided popular lighthearted entertainment, the BBC news bulletins were the serious end and musical concerts and plays provided the classical entertainments. Children were not forgotten. They had Children’s Hour. Neath did have 3 cinemas and a few of the local villages had a cinema each. Anyone desperate to see pictures of the war would go to see the local cinema, where a Pathe newsreel could be seen. I remember seeing a commissionaire in a smart uniform with gold adornment on the sleeves and a flat hat controlling the queue of people about 4 abreast and anything up to 40 yards long, waiting to buy entrance tickets. Sometimes, the commissionaire would walk along the queue and shout “One one and ninepenny seat available”. Many near the front of the queue would wait for a couple of seats to be available together.

A drive for school children to collect books (perhaps for the waste paper or for injured soldiers to have something to read in hospital) was made. The incentive was something like 5 books for a Corporal’s cardboard badge, 10 for a sergeant’s and so on up to 250 for that of Field Marshall. One lunchtime, on the last day of the drive, I knocked the door of the Queen’s Nursing Home in Neath and explained about the campaign. I was asked in and shown a mass of booklets, which were more than magazines. I couted out more than 250. I bundled as many as I could into a bag and struggled red faced and sweating the 300 yards back to school. I entered the classroom late for the lesson and the teacher seeing my state, asked me where I had been. I answered with gasps for air “Collecting books Miss.” She asked me, “How many have you got?” I told her that I had some in the bag and the rest of the 250 were in the Queen’s Nursing Home and that I would need some help to carry them. She shrieked and dispatched some other classmates to help me. When we returned she had obviously obtained the cardboard badge ready to give me. On reflection, I hope that the injured soldiers enjoyed reading about midwifey complications or how to bed bath infirm people! I believe that I was the only Field Marshall in school!

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.