What did you and your family live on – like clothes and food?

Well we had the rationing – which you know about – and we had the small ration – will I show you the plate (it’s handed over) thank you. Now there is a week’s ration of meat which is a quarter of a pound, and that’s one egg, sometimes there was four ounce of butter; sometimes it was two ounce and half a pound of sugar. But there were other things as well, there were tinned things and all the rest so there’s quite a lot, although it doesn’t look a lot on the plate, these are the staples.

What was school like when you were a child?

Right. School was disrupted for everybody. Sometimes it was a case of there were no teachers available because you know, the men had gone off to the army or whatever, there could be disruption because of air raids and we used to have a system that if the air raid all clear siren went before 9 o’clock in the evening, you had to go in at 9 o’clock to the school. But if it didn’t go off – all clear – until after 12 o’clock you didn’t need to go into til 10. But if it went beyond that you didn’t need to go in at all. So it was good fun in its own way. (laughs)

How did you hear that the war had started?

I was at home; in fact the family were at home because we were expecting to hear an announcement from the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. And at 11 o’clock on September the 3rd, 1939 it was on the radio saying that they had sent a message to Adolf Hitler to say that if he didn’t stop the invasion of Poland then war would be declared against Germany. France had also done the same thing. How did I feel? Well we knew it was going to happen, we were expecting it to happen so it wasn’t a surprise but nobody was happy about it.

If you were – if you were evacuated, what was it like and if you weren’t why not?

Right, I wasn’t evacuated because where I stayed in Paisely was not considered a danger zone. There were no heavy industries immediately close by so our area was not really considered necessary – maybe the big cities where it was definitely in danger of bombing where the children were evacuated to the country and to safe areas. So it didn’t happen for every child – evacuation wasn’t a general thing, it was just for certain areas.

Where did you live and what happened when there was a bombing?

The time of the Clydebank blitz in November 1940 I was staying in – just the outskirts of Renfrew and the sirens went about 9 o’clock in the evening and obviously we went to the shelter. The bombs started to fall fairly soon afterwards. Some we heard on the other side of the roof of the house and landing fairly close by but the bombing you could hear – and the anti-aircraft guns of course were firing all the time – you could hear the bombs, big ones, big thousand pound bombs going off and when the raid was over in the early hours of the morning we looked across the sky and it was red with Clydebank burning with the distilleries, the oil, the factories – Singer’s factory, the wood store was on fire – that was an immense – immense thing, Clydebank was devastated. Large areas – the Clydebank that exists now is quite different from what existed then.

Do you have a funny memory from the war?

Yes, it was in my own family. My father was a Special Constable and the first time we heard the siren we weren’t very sure whether it was a warning siren or an all clear, and he’s going, looking up his book to see what kind of – whether it was a warning or an all clear. But what was the worst part when he went to put on his uniform as a Constable he couldn’t find his whistle. So – Adolf, stop the war, Dad cannae find his whistle! We can’t have a war without his whistle. Now actually, the bit about the whistle, although it’s funny, was actually quite serious because the whistle was actually used as an all clear after a gas attack if there had been a gas attack. So although he had a good laugh about it had a serious bit too. (laughs)

My main memory is the very second day? Shortly after war anyway there was great celebrations and on a piece of waste ground near us they lit a bonfire which I attended along with the young lady of my choice. And my main memory is of my father coming over at midnight to say ‘Come on, time to go home” (laughs).