MARY

Mary was born in 1911 into an England which was soon to change forever. Family life was blighted by the Great War of 1914-1918 and the Depression which followed. This selection of the memories of a nonagenarian is sometimes amusing, occasionally sad. It shows how Mary coped with day-to-day living at different stages in her life. Having to give up work on her marriage, bringing up a young family single-handedly during the Second World War, Mary, like so many other women at the time, faced daily problems, uncertainty and danger with stoicism and wry humour. "We were told that if we couldnt make arrangements for an air-raid shelter, the safest places in the house were the dividing wall between next door, if you were semi-detached," she said, "and the centre of the house between two rooms ..." Mary introduces us to characters and situations which, though of their time, are fresh and vivid.