A short while after my mother’s visit I received news that our house had been hit by a bomb and my family had been moved to another part of Brentford. Maybe it’s for the best that I never really knew the details of that catastrophe. In future years none of the family ever really talked about that night, and I had to piece together what I know now from fragments of unguarded conversations. When I returned home from Nottinghamshire the family was renting half a council house on Whitestile Road, a place euphemistically termed a modern flat in the council paperwork.

Of course, being bombed out, was a common story across the country in those early war years. At least we had the luck not to have lost anyone, unlike so many others.

It seems that the family had heard the air raid sirens while they were having their tea. Experience meant that they knew that there would be a short amount of time before the bombers arrived so they decided to finish eating around the coal fire in our tiny sitting room, which was the only source of heat in the house. The guns in the park were hammering away and the whistles from falling bombs were very close.

Our end of terrace council house was adjoined by four flats with another house like ours at the other end where the Moore family lived. All of the flats and houses were fully occupied that teatime, and as ever, we had relatives in for food. There were seven people in the sitting room, although Fred and the recently returned Ruth were out dancing somewhere.

One of my uncles later told me that suddenly the whistling sound of a bomb pierced through the usual teatime chatter. My father apparently shouted, “Door!”, and all seven people in the room jumped up and ran towards the door. As they did so the whole of the fireplace wall collapsed into a heap of rubble right where they had been sitting. The flats next door took the full might of the bomb and every person in those flats was killed, including some lovely old folk who had been my childhood friends. The only wall left was the one through which the family had fled. The Moore family at the other end survived as well, thankfully...