	What changed after the War?
	In the Remembrance Day service Rob Green asked three people to answer this question and that sent me down my own memory lane. This is the result. I started going to a Derbyshire village school at the age of 4½ in the first week of the 1939 war. I left when the winter snow came deeper and lasted longer than in any year we can remember other than 1947. Spring came with my fifth birthday and I had to go back! As Allan Leach said, ‘War-time days were great days for a boy’, if you could still live at home: I had maps on the living-room wall instead of fresh paint or wall-paper, moved flags forward as the armies advanced and spent late nights listening to the radio during air-raid alerts. The climax of the war approached in the spring of 1945 with Allied gains; it was also the time for the scholarship exams for entry into grammar school. The scholarships had names like Pursglove: these were benefactors, kindly disposed people, who thought like us, that 'schooling' mattered, and provided funds for grammar school education. The exams were behind us, but results still loomed, when early in May the news spread that the war would end on Wednesday. My mam cut worn-out sheets, dyed some red, some blue, got them dry, found a scrap of yellow, and sewed up a hammer and sickle, a Stars and Stripes and a Union Jack, which were hanging for a few days out of the front bedroom windows opposite the post-office. Wednesday, VE day, was a special day. I couldn't remember seeing my mam relaxed before. I found I couldn’t sleep after the excitement of the day and felt my mam’s relaxation premature. It seemed to me that the Japanese still hadn't suffered a defeat on (continental) land and were close to the Indian-Burmese border. They could sweep across India, Asia and Europe and we'd still be in for it. For the first time, I was scared. But life, the return of village war prisoners ('Welcome Home, Jim' and so on, went right across the Post-Office), a general election and a European Peace Conference still went on - and our exam results came out. There were two boards in the village school with the names of all the village boys and girls who had obtained scholarships to the Buxton Grammar Schools. The first went from 1919 to 1938 and there were a few on the second up to 1944, one or two names per year. In 1945, about a dozen boys and girls passed and were awarded a 'Free Place' alongside them.	For the first time, the department of education provided the funds to send more children to secondary schools, instead of relying on benefactors. This increase in numbers showed that planning for peace, with appropriate bills and Acts of Parliament had been going on during the war – and was an early sign that the times they are a-changing. An ultimatum was sent to the Japanese: apparently, they refused to surrender. The Bomb was dropped, followed by another and they surrendered. If you weren't glad, you weren't there. It was over. All the survivors were coming home. Gradually, they removed the barbed wire (to stop the tanks!) from the sides of the roads and the posts in the fields to foil air-borne landings. All the signposts (e.g. Buxton 3 miles) were found and put back and the street lamps came back on. The first two priorities for village mams, both during and just after the war, were the rent and food. Despite this, we children were reasonably warmly dressed. But, especially for families with three or four school-age children, expenditure on clothes was a worry. The trick of buying a little too big and keep wearing even a little too small was practised, but finer cloths soon wear out. Some chose corduroy, a hard-wearing, unbreathing fabric, and worn day-in, day-out, one that reeked. Even so, money still had to be put by. Though people no longer feared being out of a job, they were afraid of being too ill to go to work, or to visit the doctor's. To fetch a doctor out from Chapel-en-le-Frith and get the medicine prescribed cost someone's mam a couple of hour's take-home pay. Introduction of NHS treatment (again planned during the war) made a huge difference to her sense of well-being: the first call on emergency money put by was for children’s clothes, not for the doctor. Soon, schools dared to prescribe school uniforms for under 14's, to stop some would-be-dandies showing off and no children wore corduroy any more. The Festival of Britain and Coronation both came and went, accompanied by an increase in optimism. 10 years later, more and more people were looking to buy a house and G-Plan furniture. This had begun to look like the land fit for heroes - yet now heroism had gone on ration. All the rest of us wanted a piece of the proceeds, after all. Brian Crayston
	Norbury Parish Church, Hazel Grove, Stockport, Cheshire. Telephone: 0161-483 6325

What changed after the War?

In the Remembrance Day service Rob Green asked three people to answer this question and that sent me down my own memory lane. This is the result.

I started going to a Derbyshire village school at the age of 4½ in the first week of the 1939 war. I left when the winter snow came deeper and lasted longer than in any year we can remember other than 1947. Spring came with my fifth birthday and I had to go back! As Allan Leach said, ‘War-time days were great days for a boy’, if you could still live at home: I had maps on the living-room wall instead of fresh paint or wall-paper, moved flags forward as the armies advanced and spent late nights listening to the radio during air-raid alerts.

The climax of the war approached in the spring of 1945 with Allied gains; it was also the time for the scholarship exams for entry into grammar school. The scholarships had names like Pursglove: these were benefactors, kindly disposed people, who thought like us, that 'schooling' mattered, and provided funds for grammar school education. The exams were behind us, but results still loomed, when early in May the news spread that the war would end on Wednesday. My mam cut worn-out sheets, dyed some red, some blue, got them dry, found a scrap of yellow, and sewed up a hammer and sickle, a Stars and Stripes and a Union Jack, which were hanging for a few days out of the front bedroom windows opposite the post-office.

Wednesday, VE day, was a special day. I couldn't remember seeing my mam relaxed before. I found I couldn’t sleep after the excitement of the day and felt my mam’s relaxation premature. It seemed to me that the Japanese still hadn't suffered a defeat on (continental) land and were close to the Indian-Burmese border. They could sweep across India, Asia and Europe and we'd still be in for it. For the first time, I was scared. But life, the return of village war prisoners ('Welcome Home, Jim' and so on, went right across the Post-Office), a general election and a European Peace Conference still went on - and our exam results came out.

There were two boards in the village school with the names of all the village boys and girls who had obtained scholarships to the Buxton Grammar Schools. The first went from 1919 to 1938 and there were a few on the second up to 1944, one or two names per year. In 1945, about a dozen boys and girls passed and were awarded a 'Free Place' alongside them.

For the first time, the department of education provided the funds to send more children to secondary schools, instead of relying on benefactors. This increase in numbers showed that planning for peace, with appropriate bills and Acts of Parliament had been going on during the war – and was an early sign that the times they are a-changing.

An ultimatum was sent to the Japanese: apparently, they refused to surrender. The Bomb was dropped, followed by another and they surrendered. If you weren't glad, you weren't there. It was over. All the survivors were coming home. Gradually, they removed the barbed wire (to stop the tanks!) from the sides of the roads and the posts in the fields to foil air-borne landings. All the signposts (e.g. Buxton 3 miles) were found and put back and the street lamps came back on.

The first two priorities for village mams, both during and just after the war, were the rent and food. Despite this, we children were reasonably warmly dressed. But, especially for families with three or four school-age children, expenditure on clothes was a worry. The trick of buying a little too big and keep wearing even a little too small was practised, but finer cloths soon wear out. Some chose corduroy, a hard-wearing, unbreathing fabric, and worn day-in, day-out, one that reeked.

Even so, money still had to be put by. Though people no longer feared being out of a job, they were afraid of being too ill to go to work, or to visit the doctor's. To fetch a doctor out from Chapel-en-le-Frith and get the medicine prescribed cost someone's mam a couple of hour's take-home pay. Introduction of NHS treatment (again planned during the war) made a huge difference to her sense of well-being: the first call on emergency money put by was for children’s clothes, not for the doctor. Soon, schools dared to prescribe school uniforms for under 14's, to stop some would-be-dandies showing off and no children wore corduroy any more.

The Festival of Britain and Coronation both came and went, accompanied by an increase in optimism. 10 years later, more and more people were looking to buy a house and G-Plan furniture. This had begun to look like the land fit for heroes - yet now heroism had gone on ration. All the rest of us wanted a piece of the proceeds, after all.

Brian Crayston

What changed after the War?

Norbury Parish Church, Hazel Grove, Stockport, Cheshire. Telephone: 0161-483 6325