"Rats! There's plenty around the tip. Get 'em in a corner and they'll go for yer throat and eat yer alive". I saw seven years old and believed what these older boys told me.
It was the early 1940s and the Corporation Tip was full of stacked corrugated sheets used to build Anderson Air Raid shelters. Little bodies could squeeze underneath and disappear in the game of Hide and Seek.
I was slight in build and quickly found a corner where I thought I was safe.
He'll never find me here, I thought, as I settled down, hardly daring to breathe as I listened for my pursuer.
It was an old game, but our seeker was now a German soldier waiting to shoot someone's brains out.
I held my breath as I listened with my arms clasped around my knees, eyes wide open and ears straining.
Suddenly, terror engulfed me. The enemy outside was nothing to what was staring at me.
Silently, through a small gap there had entered something much worse than a German with a gun. A rat! It moved silently towards me, then stopped as it looked at me. When would it leap for my throat?
It sat back on its haunches and continued to stare.
I couldn't breathe. My body was rigid with terror. I thought I was about to die.
As though to compound its superiority it then proceeded to wash itself, just as I had seen our domestic cat do.
I stared in disbelief as its partner came through the same gap and did the same ablutions as its companion.
Just as I thought my lungs would burst they gave me one last glance, turned around and nonchalantly left.
I quickly crawled out of my hiding place grazing my knees with tears streaming down my face. The seeker saw me and beat me to the den. When I tried to explain he scoffed and said "Excuses - pull the other one".
Boys! Think they know it all.
