meal was liver and bacon. Now I was not fussy about my food and could eat with relish practically everything except liver and malt toffee. How could I tell them? They had taken so much trouble! So I forced it down, convinced I would be sick at any moment. They were delighted to find something we all enjoyed and liver was served three times in the next three weeks! Having eaten it once without a fuss I couldn’t say I didn’t like it – and eventually I found that I did – all that fuss throughout my childhood for nothing!

Some of the more alert of our pupils had posted their postcards home to announce their safe arrival before the last post went. Brentwood was only a shilling bus ride from Stratford, so why not visit the little dears to make sure. After all, it was Saturday. Parents started to arrive at lunchtime ... but ... we had no idea where any of their offspring were! Although the war had not yet started the Government expected bombing might well start before a formal declaration of war, so we were forbidden to call the children together.

My Dad was in his element. He took over the best room in the best pub in the High Street as his office. Peter and I were recruited as his aides and worked with the billeting officers. The Declaration of War on Sunday passed un-noticed – we were too busy tracking down our children and moving any who had been put somewhere unsuitable. Several of the more affluent residents of Brentwood resented the evacuees from the East End of London. Two of our girls were nagged until they got fed up and went home. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, two great girls of fifteen, to be still at school instead of going into service to help your poor mothers.” It made no difference that theirs was a Grammar school at which they were either paying fees or had scholarships. That first Sunday more than one well-heeled family sat down to Sunday Roast in the dining room while their evacuees ate their very elderly corned beef sandwiches in the kitchen. However, most of the residents, mainly the less well off, did their best to make their visitors welcome.

Part of this time Stratford Grammar School was able to use Brentwood School for lessons. After three weeks Peter and I were found a house to share with the Economics teacher and his wife, Mr and Mrs Smith. The house was amazing and had been built bit by bit over the centuries. At the front it was a very old, low-ceilinged cottage. The door opened onto one of the two front rooms, out of which a low door revealed a winding staircase to a bedroom, ours. Another door led into another front room, theirs, from which a second staircase led nowhere. A fourth door from our sitting room led into a high ceilinged passage, Victorian, giving access to a square dining room on the right and kitchen, bathroom and lavatory on the left. Behind that again was a large single storey school room, now partitioned to store coal