By Lavinia Ruddick from Llanafan, Ceredigion:

"How old was I? I'm 90 now! I was born in 1914. I'd be about 24. I was living in Manchester. I had one child who was a year old, a little girl. My husband worked in telecommunications and he was very much involved with the war in Manchester.

We lived just two miles out of Manchester. He worked mainly nights and I used to long for morning to come to know that he was alright because Manchester was very badly bombed. He used to come home and tell me stories of all the rats running across the road after the bombing.

We had one very very bad bomb. I lived on an estate and there was a very big bomb dropped which shook the house. The children were under the stairs because we'd made the stairs into a shelter. It was very difficult to get out to the shelters even though we had them in our own gardens. We had Anderson shelters.

It was a very traumatic time really. Of course we used to queue up for food and I remember going to the coal yard for coke to keep the fires going. Cooking was the same. I'll tell you a funny story, my next door neighbour had gone to the butchers and they'd got marabones which we used to make soup with and she said I'll make my soup and then I'll pass it on to you. You wouldn't believe this would you?!

We used to make cakes. My granddaughter was horrified when I told her in recent years that we used to make cakes and instead of fat, because everything was rationed, we used to put liquid paraffin in the cakes, but it was wonderful!

And dried eggs was another thing that we used an awful lot of and then as time went on we still queued for food. The neighbours would come out and say, 'oh greengrocers have got such and such, hurry up and you'll get some' and that's how we used to live really.

And then towards the end of the war I got pregnant and had a son. So I had two little ones then. And I used to make all their clothes out of things that we'd worn that were no longer in use. I made simon suits for the children to take them down to the shelter.

It was a very hard time really but we did have good times as well. But when I look back I wonder how we did manage really, you know?"

By Lavinia Ruddick