When the day came the Old Man sent the Senior Master to take charge, he himself staying with those children who preferred to risk the bombs yet to come.

“God help you if you let those children get onto any train that is not going to Helston. You will have me to deal with – so stand firm,” he said. So for four hours the Senior Master and the school stood firm against all pressure from police and station staff. In the end the right train came in and they embarked. Many, many London schools were sent to Cornwall that day, but we were the only one that got to the right place.

Peter and I had arranged to share a granite house with the French teacher, Mr Betts, his wife and three-year-old son. Some of the teaching took place in Helston Grammar School and some in church halls. If I needed to know where Peter was, all I had to do was to step outside the front door and ask the first passer-by. They always knew.

Down in Cornwall rationing meant very little. Our milk came from Jersey cows and was literally half cream. There was a solid fuel Cornish stove in our shared kitchen. We skimmed off the cream and left it on the back of the stove to turn into Cornish clotted cream with its delicious buttery-yellow crust.

Every morning a fisherman called with a large basket of fish. Each night he would let his nets down over the cliffs at Porthleven, the nearest fishing village, and each morning he would fill his basket with whatever he had caught and call round to his customers. Many of the fish I had never seen before, but he would advise on cooking methods. He also fished for crabs with crab pots and these he boiled. If you put a live crab into cold water and slowly bring it to the boil the crab stays whole. If you are soft hearted and kill them quickly by dropping them into boiling water they “shoot” their large claws where most of the meat is. He must have been soft hearted because for a penny or two I could buy a delicious large claw full of white crab meat.

There was a dairy just up the road where one could buy eggs off the ration, lard with which to make lardy cake, unrationed rabbits, chickens, Cornish pasties, and saffron to make saffron cakes. I learnt to cook them all in the side oven of that stove. Although we shared the kitchen there were no problems. Mr Betts was a vegetarian and ate mainly lentils and Mrs Betts cooked very little. Young David Betts had already learnt to make early morning tea for his parents, and somehow never scalded himself. Mr Betts had been brought up to go into the Air Force and when he announced that he was going to university to read French instead his father disowned him, so he had financed his way through college on his Bridge earnings.