As Bessie and I were now evacuated into the Yorkshire countryside bombs were beginning to be dropped on Middlesbrough. Some, we learned, were dropped onto the steel works where Dad had only recently taken up his new employment but thank goodness, according to his letters which he wrote to us at regular intervals, he was safe and sound.

      As time went by Bessie and I were not happy with our temporary guardians. We were there, I reckon, to be just little servants even though the people who supposedly looked after us received an income for looking after our needs.

      This was brought out in our letters home and soon Mam came and took us both home to our house in the Market Place.

      We soon settled down again and I resumed my activities at the butcher’s shop. I think that the two brothers were beginning to have confidence in me as one day they asked me to ride on my shop cycle to the slaughter house and collect some skeins.   These apparently are part of a sheep and once in the shop they were to be soaked in salty water over night and next day they were used to house the sausage meat which was a mixture of grain, pork cuttings and a flavour - Britain was already on a low meat diet by this time.
After the sausage meat (or whatever you might call it) was mixed up the skiens were stretched over a pipe attached to the sausage machine and the mixture pushed into the cylindrical top, the handle turned and low and behold out popped sausages in one long stream. A little deft twisting and there one had a string of sausages ready for the pan. After a few trial runs and VOILA! I graduated to be a sausage maker!