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Prepared.

In 1959 I was a young draughtsman at company in Witton and we had a civil defence manager and once a week we had to go to what we young ones thought were boring lectures about civil defence. One 'exercise' I remember was when we had to lower a young office boy who was strapped to a stretcher from the top floor of an office block. Half way down the stretcher got stuck and we had to get the maintenance people to bring long ladders to get it down.
 
In 1950's my mother worked for school meals, occasionally on a Saturday she would go to somewhere in Edgbaston on Civil Defence training, not sure if it was a voluntary thing or a part of her job. She would come back saying she had been cooking in a dustbin. We kids would wonder at the size of the dustbin as mom was not slim! It was much later that we realised she had been using the dustbin as a large saucepan.
 
We all thought CD was a joke but three years later in 1962 the Cuban Missile crisis occurred which was the one time during the Cold War when we thought 'this is it' and the chat in the office was 'what shall do in the days we have got left ' and where was the best place to shelter when the nuclear bombs were launched at us. Our company had by that time decided we did not need a civil defence manager and he had gone.
 
In 1950's my mother worked for school meals, occasionally on a Saturday she would go to somewhere in Edgbaston on Civil Defence training, not sure if it was a voluntary thing or a part of her job. She would come back saying she had been cooking in a dustbin. We kids would wonder at the size of the dustbin as mom was not slim! It was much later that we realised she had been using the dustbin as a large saucepan.
I suppose this was where mom would have gone for that Saturday training.
 
In 1970's we had a small holding in Worcestershire as we were north east (prevailing winds and all that) and within a certain number of miles of the Severn estuary nuclear power stations we had to be on a list to be notified in the event of a reactor accident.
 
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