Who's the youngest and the oldest D-i-Yer on here?

After the war my dad turned the Anderson shelter into a chicken coop, so we had a nice supply of fresh eggs (and roast chicken).

When that phase was over I can remember it being dismantled for scrap, apparently there was a demand for scrap steel and so it went for a good price.

I can just remember the (very smelly) pig bins at the end of our street, I don’t think they lasted as long as the Anderson shelter.

Our bomb shelter was in a field about 200m from the house. Why anyone thought the Germans would target a relatively isolated farmhouse is unknown. When we kids dismantled it we discovered the roof was supported by cut up rail lines.

The *Anderson shelter* steel was around 2mm thick and must have been sold off as post war surplus as we had a barn used for rearing calves built of the stuff.>

Where I rented an old cottage from a Fen Farmer...there were a couple of really large poplars growing right next to a 'drain' (man made drainage canals that feed the river system via pumps).

"Ar well them shouldn't be that close to the drain, that were an accident. In the war I made a chicken run and used two poplar sticks for the corners, and they grew into those'

People these days don't realise how little 'new' stuff there was and how much it actually cost.

We lived on second hand furniture and hand-me-downs. During covid I dismantled some of my grandmothers home made quilts, stuffed with chicken feathers from her chickens. These dated to the 1930s.

I made cushions with them.

My mother used to call it the 'pigs bin'. It went on a 'compost heap' to feed the rats.

Eventually it ended up on vegetables and stuff

The joys of buying cheap food from shops....

Behind the family house, there was a field. Around 20 miles from London we were. well outside any target and until the suburbanisation of the

Nevertheless there was a bomb crater in that field.

When my parents' CC41 (1) bed was eventually replaced, I acquired some of the timber. One of its main beams has been supporting my workbench for over 50 years.

(1)

We are still 20 miles from central London! The Germans were said to target the Vauxhall works at Luton (then making light tanks) which took them over us. It was also said that they used the area North of London to gain altitude so the actual bombing run was at maximum speed to get through the AA fire.

I don't think the village was ever targeted, the few craters were likely caused by releases to lighten the aircraft.>

I think it was the Germans that discovered that bombing from a shallow dive gave more accurate results than level bombing. ISTR it was something like a

There was a fair amount of that!

No. 1 Group of Bomber Command had a policy of always carrying the maximum bomb load that was allowed by the fuel requirements of the mission, tested by loading up a Lancaster until something broke - which was the undercarriage. As a result of the policy of overloading, aircraft flew badly and couldn’t gain the planned height by the time they crossed the Dutch coast.

As a result many crews jettisoned some, or sometimes all, of their bomb load into the North Sea, the bombers route showing from the trail of incendiaries that were dumped.

From what I have read of WWII high altitude bombing accuracy, intended targets made very little difference.

They just dropped bombs 'in the general direction' and hoped

And Utility furniture was very well made. We had a second-hand utility dining table right up until around 1980.

As I recall the 'logo' was like a pacman biting another pacman 'CC'

We never had trolleybuses in Liverpool, though I think I can remember them in Brighton (family visits, mid-1950s). But we did have trams and I can just remember riding on the number 6 (later replaced by the same number on busus).

Same number of monarchs here.

PMs?

I remember that on an iron bedstead frame. I assumed it was a trademark.

I think we had them in south west London/Surrey, Kingston/Surbiton. I do not recall ever travelling on one.

Ditto.

Looking at the list I can only think of two that I had any respect for whatsoever as peacetime PMs. Macmillan and Thatcher.

They say Attlee was wonderful, but he gave away the British empire and created so many problems in the middle east....

Now you mention it, my opinion is more or less the same.

Wilson would be a distant third, I suppose. Entertainment value, at least. And Callaghan fourth.

I never felt under threat from them as I did under Blair and Brown.

That had been Labour policy for some time? Exacerbated by Asian nationalist forces coming to the fore during WW2?

There were trams in Brighton until 1939. My mother remembered travelling on them. They were replaced by trolleybuses.

It was a complicated arrangement. Brighton Corporation operated the trolleybuses, out of the old tram depot. Brighton, Hove and District Omnibus Company operated diesel buses (trolleys didn't enter Hove, heaven forfend). And the Southdown Motor Company operated longer range diesel buses.

The trolleys were phased out in the very early 1960s, but I remember travelling on them. The last journey was done by bus FUF 1, which had also done the first journey. I think some of them went off to Bournemouth.

I remember seeing trams in Leeds in the 50’s but never rode one. The very last trolley busses in the UK were in Bradford in 1972.