Well-dug hole worth its weight in gold

I CHALLENGE each of you to sit down somewhere comfortable and remember some of the many things you have forgotten.

If you have forgotten how to sit down then remember how you stood up and force yourself to do just the reverse of that... Then try not to remember anything and just allow yourself to forget what it was that you were thinking about before you sat down, or when you were standing up just before you sat down!

I have just done all that and I find myself thinking about all the things I used to think about when I was just a kid... and all the things I never think about from that time of my life.

It can be very refreshing to think about those things, from time to time!

The most important thing that I try not to think about is the Second World War or, at least, not in any adult way that would inevitably involve me thinking about it in the way that my parents must surely have had to think about it.

It is not difficult for me not to think about it because they were so careful about the way they thought about it at times when I, and my brother, would have hated thinking about it.

Come to think about it, I think most people of my age would also think like that. We were very lucky to have parents who must have thought about war every hour of every day but never scared us with those thoughts.

My brother and I were born in 1939 and I suspect that our thinking about the war was probably remarkably similar to that of our mates; living in the suburbs of London and sometimes wondering what caused some of them to disappear without saying goodbye!

I never really worried about it, but perhaps it’s true that little kids had more to worry about than that, like “What’s for tea, Mum?”, or “Why aren’t Arsenal playing today, Mum?”.

I hated the thought of getting killed and stuff like that but it did seem almost normal at that time.

Anyway, getting one’s feet safely tucked into our air-raid shelter was a much greater challenge on a frosty night with half a gale blowing up your knickers than merely falling asleep with German planes flying overhead and supper getting cold.

My Dad had built the inevitable airraid shelter in our back garden with its four tiny bunks and rain-soaked doorway.

It was very crowded by a night-attired Mum, several never-opened boxes, never-ironed shirts and countless unwashed pairs of knickers!

However, it all seemed to do the anti-Hun trick and we all survived with hardly a scratch between us.

I secretly think that my Dad was very proud of the quality of the hole that he dug in the first place. It meant that he and his precious family could sleep, eat, and even die together whenever the need arose.

It also meant that he rarely had to sleep with his neighbours in the large brick road shelter that blocked the sun from shining on the shrubs he had so lovingly planted just before the War started.

I can remember him telling my Mum that a well-dug hole was always worth its weight in gold. She always got over-excited when she saw him with a shovel in his hands, and got very excited about where he might have thought that a well-drilled hole would solve most of the world’s problems!

Perhaps she just thought that her husband was searching for new depths of understanding. He might glow with wisdom and truth the next time she had a row with him about how much it cost to just keep a roof over their heads!