The large black-leaded range that with mam's help kept us fed and warm, dominated our kitchen. Each evening, the fire, banked up with small coal and the day's peelings, sang gentle sizzling songs, which lulled rather than irritated. The fender, not really meant as a seat, was my favourite place to sit. There I toasted my back as I book-wormed my way through whatever reading matter I could find.

Dad's large wooden armchair, commandeered by mam when he was called up, had a patchwork quilted cover on its back and a squashy feather cushion to sit on. Mam would recline it against the wall and make a cosy nest whenever one of us felt unwell; and not once did this precarious bed ever fall.

We had a hand-me-down oil-clothed kitchen table, where mam ironed the washing, kneaded bread, rolled pastry, and made her scrumptious piccalilli. It was our study centre during homework sessions, a gaming table for snap, dominoes, and any other game we devised. It became our desk, when, using the bright brass candlesticks as phones, we played office; and the place where mam sewed new clothes for us out of old.

At mealtimes, with the table bedecked in its weekday homemade gingham cloth - Sundays were starched white damask days - we sat and talked our way through war-rationed meals that somehow mam managed to make tasty. Often as we ate, a "Mexican wave" of spontaneous giggling infected us, and reverberated, much to mam's exasperation, from child to child and back again.

David, The only male in our matriarchal home, played with his toys on the large colourful rag rug that adorned the floor.

Outside I had lots of lovely places to play, and spent as many hours exploring the nooks and crannies as time and weather allowed; but our kitchen was my special place where I could be myself. I could sing out loud, albeit out of tune, and be applauded! Recite poetry, not understanding it but loving it's rhythm, or just sit and be quiet. It was my bolthole, my shelter from the world - and of course mam was always there.

Jan Lewis