Where did you live in the war?
Elma: In Aberdeen.

How old were you?
Elma: I was still at school. I would have been 10… the war was on but I was younger (1932).
Kathy: I was 10 when the war broke out (1929).

I did you have to do any work?
Kathy: No …we didn’t work until we were 14 years old. We left school when we were 14. So I wasn’t working during the war.
Elma: I got to leave the school when I was 14.

What was your favourite pastime?
Well we just had to do children’s games or have picnics with your family. We used to play skipping and bed dies you had a piece of wood and you put it up to different numbers and you jumped, skipped up. We did that. …What else? Home made games .You didn’t buy things…the washing rope was the skipping rope.

What school did you go to?
I went to Sunnybank School. When I was there, the army took over as an army barracks- an army billet, so we had to walk all the way down to Dunbar St to Old Aberdeen School. So I was there until I was 12 and then I went up to Powies School where I left at 14.
Elma:: I went to Holburn St School – for the whole time until I was 12 and then we went to Rutherstan school. Both of them now have been knocked down. Holburn St School is now the college and Ruthrieston school is now a big block of new very expensive flats.

Did you share a shelter with anyone?
Kathy: Yes, we lived in a block of 6 tenants and we used a shelter. But sometimes if the weather was really bad we lived on the bottom and so they all used to come down into our house and lie… and my mum used to put blanket and pillows in a long lobby and we all stayed there.
…It was quite a good community?
Kathy: Yes, and my mum used to give the children cocoa, cup of cocoa and maybe a biscuit or something.
Elma: We didn’t have an air raid shelter but we were asked to go across the road to a nursing home in Great Western Road (I stayed in Gt. Western Road) – they had a big place underneath, which they reckoned was better than a shelter, and we were invited over there - but we never went!

What was your favourite treat?
Kathy: Eating? We never got much. Any of the shops near your grocer’s shop had got a good amount of apples could come in and we used to go to the shop and queue for bananas or any other kind of treats that came in. You all had to go to the shop and queue to get an allowance - so much for each person.

So it was food coming from other countries outside the EU?
Yes very little apples, bananas, oranges, pears…. Didn’t get much treats.

Bombs?
Kathy: Well yes...Bedford yes. I lived in Bedford Avenue and the road down at the bottom (Bedford road) …there was serious bombing there and there was 2 girls from my school- they were killed at bombs in B. Rd. It was a whole big building. It was all knocked down.
Not a block of flats, it was a house?
It was 6 or 8 tenements, 2 children at school with me - they were killed.