Where were you living?
Evelyn: Froghall Avenue
Sheila: Park Rd

What were you doing at the start of the war?
Evelyn: We just started school at Causewayend
Sheila: I was at King St School, Urquhart Rd

Were any of your family evacuated?
Evelyn: No I wasn’t evacuated but my husband was

Did you lose anyone in your family?
Evelyn: An uncle down in Grimbsy was drowned at sea – the ship was torpedoed
Sheila: My Uncle Jimmy was lost in Korea, but that was after the war. I just had folk in the army, my father an them... that was a’

Were you involved in any bombing?
Evelyn: Yes, when I came home from school I was machine gunned on my way home up Canal Rd... you know where that is? And a lady who lived (the houses aren’t there any more) in the cottages they ran out and pulled all the children into their houses.
We were coming out of the house one morning to go to school at Causewayend we were stopped by the police halfway up Froghall Avenue. All the houses at the top of Froghall Avenue had been bombed. Elmbank was bombed, Powis Place was bombed – the houses were – there was just vacant lots for a long time. Lost our windows with the blast and the bombing was pretty near! If you see where we’re sitting now (Seaton Community Centre) where the bombs fell from here to Seaton School it’s not a big distance is it? So we were lucky would you say?
Sheila: Urquhart Rd just round the corner from where our school was badly bombed and we were off school for a while because of it. I also waved to a German pilot when I was off school. Remember the time the Trinity Cemetery was bombed? He didn’t drop his bombs anywhere else but at the cemetery there. I just was sitting in the window sill at Park Rd (up at the top we lived) and I waved to the plane coz it was as close as anything and I just said to my mother, “I was waving to a young man in a plane and he had (laughs) a big cross on his aeroplane”. At that time I did not know it was a German plane - I gave him a wave and he waved back!

How much food did you get from your ration book?
Sheila: My memory doesn’t go back that far! A shilling’s worth of corn beef that was yer ration. A shillin o corn beef from the butcher
Evelyn: I can’t remember, didn’t get very much... very little sugar, very little butter, fresh meat…. not a lot of fruit. You didn’t get fruit you had to have a ration book (just the children). When the fruit arrived in Aberdeen all the neighbours used to come and tell ye, “There’s bananas in (?) Pedlars’; there’s bananas down in Knowles” (that was in Market St) and things like that.
Very good neighbours at that time, everybody looked after one another.
Sheila: Yer sweeties were rationed!
Evelyn: 4oz of sweets a month!