It was different times – every time I pass it now, I have to smile

Please note: this post is 28 months old and The Cares Family is no longer operational. This post is shared for information only

When World War Two broke out, I was ten – nearly 11 – years old. A picture of me is below. I lived in Canal Terrace, which runs along the side of the Grand Union Canal. I used to love swimming in the canal with my friends – and the odd rat of course.

At the top of Canal Terrace was King’s Cross goods yard and every evening they would switch on the lights so that the men could do their work. They would then get the message that the German bombers were coming across the coast, and to switch off all the lights. I and anybody who was with me would run down Canal Terrace shouting “lights out” and everybody went into their shelters, even before the air raid warning went off.

The air raid shelter they built for us at home was an Anderson Shelter. It was made of sheets of steel, bent over at the top and bolted together, and a sheet of steel with a large gap, which was the entrance to the shelter. We would put sandbags or earth on top of the shelter in case a bomb dropped nearby. The problem with the Anderson Shelter was that they had to dig it down in the ground and it flooded, which meant we couldn’t use it. We therefore had a Morrison Shelter built in the living room which we slept under. The Morrison Shelter was like a very large kitchen table, which was made of very strong steel and a grill which was hung on it to stop any flying debris. There are pictures below of an Anderson Shelter and a Morrison Shelter.

A bomb did drop three doors away and it blew out all of our windows, the doors off their hinges and the front room ceiling fell down. The main thing I remember was that we had a cellar in the house and the fireplace disappeared into the cellar.

We lived at number 21 Canal Terrace and it was so badly damaged by this bomb that we just could not live there, but next door, number 20, was empty and was not so badly damaged so we moved into there for a while. People came and did repairs to 21 Canal Terrace, replacing the windows but obviously not with glass, but some kind of Perspex. They hung back the doors and replaced the ceiling. They also built a new fireplace, so that we could be warm in winter, so we did move back into number 21. But they never painted the ceiling and for the rest of the time we lived there we would look up and see the bare boards. This is a picture of Canal Terrace.

The day after the bomb we had to go down to get food, because in those days we never had fridges or freezers. What you ate that day was what you bought that day. We had our ration books so that we could get one or two ounces of this or that and also our clothing coupons in case you needed a pair of socks or a pair of pants. It was not very nice walking over the debris of people’s personal possessions that day, but it had to be done.

My mum decided one night when the bombing got really bad that we should sleep down in the Underground, rather than in the Anderson Shelter. I’ve seen on television the images of people sleeping down in the Underground where they are all happy and singing with a man playing the accordion. The Underground we went to was not like that. In those days, hygiene was not like today’s standard and you did not know who you were sleeping next to. We never slept down in the Underground again.

I went to York Road Primary School but early in 1941 they closed the school because it was too close to King’s Cross goods yard, which was an obvious target for the bombers. I had no school to go to and so they sent a teacher once every two weeks for two hours to home school me in my front room and three of my friends joined me to make a class. That went on for about 18 months before they found me a school to go to. This was called Buckingham Street School and is now called Copenhagen. The original York Way School is still there but is now an office block, but above the front entrance carved into the cement work, about two-foot-tall, are the words ‘York Road School’. I am now 93 years old and I still live quite close to it and every time I pass it I have to smile.

Fred has been part of the North London Cares community since 2012. He has attended film nights, Grand National Watch Parties, Saturday Night Dance Parties (of course with his beloved Joan until 2017) and so much more – deepening his years-long one-to-one friendship with younger neighbour Alex at the same time. A natural leader, Fred has spoken on behalf of North London Cares on BBC London Radio, on BBC1's One Show, on BBC1’s Inside Out series and in several of our own films. Joan also had a Love Your Neighbour friend, Lorna, and was delighted to be part of Lorna’s baby daughter Isla’s life. Fred and Joan even shared their 63^rd anniversary at a North London Cares social! Fred wrote his memoirs during the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 and is thrilled to publish them via the North London Cares website.