I was a teenager in Finchley in 1940 and remember my family huddling round the coal fire and hearing the continuous ack-ack fire and the occasional boom of a bomb. We all pretended we were not afraid, but we were terrified.

I slept on a mattress wedged between a wall and a sofa so that the ceiling was unlikely to fall down on me and I was protected from flying glass. My parents slept under the kitchen table protected by a metal shelter.

My brother and sister aged 24 and 21 went out on the town to dance or talk with friends in UCL.They came home late, taking no notice of the shrapnel produced by the ack ack guns which fell from the sky. I still have a piece of shrapnel about 2 inches long and very jqgged

There was no entertainment for a teenager. The roller skating rink in Finchley was turned into the office for ration cards..

It was terrible for my parents' generation as they lived through two world wars.