My gran was born on the 14th of December 1934, in Queen Street, Portsea, Portsmouth, in the reign of George V. My gran and her family lived there until she was one. In 1935 they moved to Lombard Street, Old Portsmouth, they lived there until the Blitz in 1941. When the house was bombed, the family moved to the underground shelter in the Camber and they had to take their furniture to St. Thomas' Cathedral.
The Portsmouth side was so badly bombed, they all had to row over to Gosport and from there caught a train to Bishopstoke (near Eastleigh) where my gran stayed with her gran until her parents found a flat in Southsea. They all lived there, even her gran, and from there they moved to Wilton Terrace. At that point my gran started school at St. Jude's, which was opposite her house, where Waitrose is now. Whenever the sirens went off in the night, she used to run across the road to the school shelter, where the ground floor was re-inforced.
One afternoon she went to the pictures at the Gaity which was where Somerfield is now in Albert Road. The sirens sounded and a Doodle Bug (V1) appeared and chased my gran and her friend all the way home. There were air raid wardens everywhere trying to catch them and put them in shelters, but my gran and her friend dodged them.
When my gran was 16, she left school and worked in a shop in Lake Road and then in Albert Road. She married my granddad Ron in February 1959, when she was 24, and they moved to Nightingale Road, Southsea, where my dad was born in October 1960.
My grandparents moved to Leeds in Yorkshire with two children in 1962. They lived there until May 1972 and then went to live in Horndean with four boys. Both my grandparents are still living in the same house. All their children have now left home and my grandparents have eight grandchildren, of which I am the eldest.

by Ana Chapero-Hall 2004