As it was ? … Well almost.
Posted by Big John on January 13, 2008
Earlier today I discovered, by accident, a BBC website for children all about what it was like to be a kid in this country during World War II.
I must say that I felt very much at home visiting this website, firstly because I was a child during those troubled times and secondly because the content is aimed at 7 - 9 year olds.
The ‘Wartime Home’ section shows a house a lot like the one I lived in. I especially liked the illustration of the ’scullery’ although the one in our house was more scruffy and lacked the gas water heater, and I wasn’t ‘posh’ enough to have a water jug and basin in my bedroom, although I did have another piece of ‘china’ under the bed.
We ‘lived’ in the kitchen as the sitting room (known as the front room) was only used for special occasions, that is until the night when Herr Hitler decided to bring down the ceiling and wreck the front of the house.
Some of the photographs brought back memories like …
I can’t relate too much to the section on evacuees as I only spent a short time in the country with my mother and an aunt, before returning to London just in time for the ‘Blitz’. I just can’t imagine today’s ‘little darlings’ being labelled and shipped off to some unknown destination, not knowing if they would ever return.
My best friend’s big sister was named Vera, so it was nice to meet up with her again after all these years, and she even managed to rustle up my favourite potato pancakes. (I would have eaten anything in those days).
I don’t know what today’s children would make of the information given on this site. It must be hard for them to imagine a world without … pizzas … television … ice cream … central heating … frozen food … bananas … and … supermarkets; but I do like the idea of kids learning about how another generation of children lived in the days of shared bathwater, blackout curtains and ration books.
The only thing that is missing from the virtual tour of the house (’an exact copy of a real family’s wartime home’) is the ‘loo’. Now this could have been shown inside or outside the house with a ‘hot link’ highlighting the cut up newspaper hanging from a nail in the wall … I wonder …
… how Vera would have explained that ? 
Posted in family, humour, nostalgia | 8 Comments »
