A Luxury of Lard

Sometime during the London Blitz, together with my next door neighbour who at the age of nine was one year older than me, I was evacuated to Mansfield from our home,Woodford Bridge in Essex.

I remember the train journey as a great adventure. We were, after all,not only travelling farther than we had ever been in our lives but we were doing it by train, a mode of transport we rarely used. Had we had any misgivings about our enforced adventure the comfort of knowing that dozens of other kids from our school were packed into all the other compartments of the train would have soon dispelled them. We were, after all, in this all together, as we were any other school day. Anyway, at the age of eight one day at a time really meant just that; tomorrow was a world away.

It is easy at a distance of sixty two years to supplant true recollections with imagined ones but I can, with my hand on my heart, state that the town of Mansfield as it was then, first seen by us as we pulled into its staion and then viewed through the coach windows that transported us through the town, was the blackest, grimiest most downtrodden place that I had ever witnessed in my young life. The Lowry look alike people with their, for the most part, dark shabby clothes hanging on them without form or character, stopping to stare at our passing coaches with sullen curiosity seemed like aliens from some strange world, and for the first time since leaving home that morning I began to feel homesick and dream of the woods and green fields of Essex that we had so shortly left behind.

We were disembarked from the coaches at a red brick building on an unmade muddy road that we were informed was to be our new school. Moor Park. Ushered by officious arm banded women, who seemed completely unsympathetic to our plight, into the school assembly hall we were seated crosslegged on the floor to await whatever fate was in store for us. The complete confusion in our minds was compounded,I remember, by the fact that we were told nothing.It was as if we were lifeless commodities that had been delivered and temporarily stored to await distribution to some unknow place for some unknown purpose. Initially we were puzzled at the lack of information and then this quickly developed into fright and some of the kids started to cry.

After what seemed like an eternity the arm banded women ushered in a line of couples who we noticed had been queuing outside the school when we arrived. These people, who for the most part talked with posh voices that we associated with only with those who were rich and important, then proceeded to move among us eyeing us up and down like farmers at a cattle market. Occasionally they would stop at one particular child and after much whispering with their backs half turned or behind a mouth sheilding hand they would ask him or her a question and then once again repeat the exercise after hearing the invariably whispered and tremulous answer. If for whatever reaon they were then dissatisfied with what they had seen or heard they would then move on and repeat the exercise with some other scared complient child or inform the one of the arm bands that they had found what they wanted and the child would be asked to stand, be introduced to their new foster parents and then taken off. Of course we didn't know where they were going or what was going to happen to them aand the longer it took for the remainder of us to be selected the more apprehensive we became. After what seemed an interminable time during which my companion Derek and I were eyed and questioned time and time again only to be rejected in favour of other children it came down to us being the last two sitting in the middle of what was now a vast almost empty assembly floor.

The arm bands and us had all but given up anyone wanting us when a grim looking lady wearing a toweled turban on her head and a flowered pinny tied around her waist entered the hall, gave us a cursory glance and after an animated conversation with the voluntary workers beckoned to us to follow her. Unlike the other children we were not introduced and the we were not spoken to

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