Cricklewood Broadway

Shortly after the Blitz started proper, I asked Mrs Gregg, my neighbour (now long departed - died in 1952 of blood poisoning) if she was going to go to the tobacconists (her husband smoked Old Shag - a type of tobacco) as I was out of Senior Service.

In those days, there used to be a tobacconists just off Cricklewood Broadway - he was a lovely chap, always stocked snuff, all pipe tobaccos and cigarettes - no filtered cigarettes then.

Well, she was going to go (her husband could get through his tobacco like no-one else I have ever met - their front room was in a perpetual haze) so I asked her to pick up ten cigarettes for me.

She was gone a long while, when my late wife called out to me (obviously she was still alive then - it's the peril of old age - everyone you know is dead! - my lovely lady wife died only two years ago) that Mrs Gregg had just returned. So I went to our back garden (although it was all vegetables then - we were digging for victory!) and she came and give me the fags. She was as white as a sheet. No sooner had she picked up her change and left, than a stray anti-aircraft shell (even in the daytime, you would get German (although we never called them that then!) reconnaisance aeroplanes buzzing over London) hit the shop. She was lucky to be alive.

And she said to me: you can go and get your own bloomin' fags from now on. How we laughed.

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