An interview with Bob Cross

Earliest memories I was about 5 years old; we had a gang with 2 boys that were the same age as me and their 2 brothers were in the gang too. The last member was a little girl. We had three- wheeled bikes and used to ride for miles in our gang. One of my neighbours had a dog that often came with us. It was half Alsatian and half Labrador and was called Taffy. It was as if there wasn’t a war as Scunthorpe, where I lived, was unaffected.

School  On the first day my older sister had to come with us just to make sure that we didn't mess around and we didn’t and we got to school on time. It was about 1 and a half miles to school. At our school we had a concrete play ground so in the winter the play ground had ice slides on it. I was good at painting and I won 1/6d. In the class there were 40 children and that the best child sat at the front and so on.

Changes through the years At Christmas you would not get any presents but if you were lucky you would get a little model airplane. We did not have any computers or TV's but we did have a radio. But the worse thing was that a lot of the time we did not have any petrol for our car because of rationing.

Changes for the better The standard of living has improved since I was younger. The heating is much better than in the war as we now have radiators, boilers and central heating. When I was younger the house was only heated by two coal fires downstairs so upstairs was really, really cold and we all huddled round the fire to keep warm. We didn’t have fitted carpet but just a square of carpet in the middle of the room. We now have less chores to do than in the war. We had to collect the paper and take the rubbish out. We have washing machines now, then we had to wash everything by hand. Monday’s were terrible because the house was full of steam as it was wash day and everything was drying in front of the fire.

Changes for the worse There was far more freedom when I was younger because there were not as many cars and we didn’t have as many crimes as now. The crimes were less serious like scrumping, which was stealing other people’s apples. A friend of mine got caught doing this and was made to eat all the apples he took but they weren’t ripe and were horrible. He was very sick!

Advice for the future My advice is to be tolerant of others because the world has changed. Live and let live don’t fall out with people.

Thank you