During WW2 my grandmother and my mother lived on the top floor of a three-storey house in Fulham. My grandmother's other daughter also lived there on the lower floors, married to her husband, a Petty Officer in the navy, and three children. My mother had tales of fire-watching with her mother, walking together in the dark doing their duty. As a child, I thought what they spoke of seemed unimaginable and an Anderson shelter in the garden so far below they often didn't bother. At the beginning of the war, my aunt took the offer of evacuation to Kent for her children. They were not there long. Once the bombing began it seemed the location was not safe either. So they returned home. My grandmother's brother lived across London in Walthamstow, about 10 miles away. She told of how sometimes she desperately wanted to visit him - they didn't have a telephone. During the day she could get a tram, but often stayed too late and there was no transport to make the return journey. So she would walk, stopping on Primrose Hill to watch the bombs falling over London. There was talk of 'doodlebugs' which sounded like a foreign language, and waiting, holding your breath until the bomb hit. My father said he was demobbed and came straight back to the house even though it was the middle of the night. He found me awake and playing on the floor with Grandma. During wartime that was not unusual. As a small child around Holland Park Avenue where we lived and towards Shepherds Bush, there were still bombed houses. I have surreal images of interiors torn apart and hanging in limbo, the odd toilet or bath just hanging on. My grandmother gave me my first banana by the war memorial on Shepherds Bush Green. I had to be shown how to peel it. Bombed spaces were being used as car parks, although there were few cars, at Notting Hill and at the bottom of Ludgate Hill near St. Paul's, which I think may have been the beginning of NCP. We have a large kitchen table. Whenever there was a storm my mother would cover it with a large blanket and we would ...