The wireless has lots of comedy programmes on, Tommy Handley and Arthur Askey are very funny. We tease mum by imitating the cleaning lady by saying ‘Can I do you now sir’, but after a while she would box our ears.
The funny programmes were made to cheer us up, but it never did really, there was always some bad news. Like the poor boy we called the Boffin, he has gone back to London, I didn’t think very much of it at the time, kids were always coming and going. Someone has said his dad who is a Merchant Seaman, is missing at sea. He was sailing with the the Atlantic convoy supplying Russia with all sorts of things to fight the Germans.
Because his dad was in and out the ports all over the place, this boy would tell us a lot of things that were not on the news. Like last year; when his dad said the government wanted to keep secret the sinking of HMS Hood. Because so many sailors had been lost, but it soon became known and was even on the wireless.
He said we only heard what the government wanted us to hear because the news was so bad at the time..Another story kept secret by the government, his dad told him, was of a big ship going over to America that had been torpedoed and had sunk with lots of evacuees onboard and hardly any of the people were saved. It makes me feel sick just thinking of it, no wonder it was kept secret.
Now that the blitz has stopped his family have moved back to their home in London. I feel so sorry for him. I can’t believe what is happening.
The original Boffin story is in Chapter thirty.
Madeinchertsey 