Henry Meadows Ltd. made buses. It was famous for its buses. In 1942 when I worked there they were no longer making buses; they had been converted to a munitions factory assembling engines for tanks and small naval reconnaissance craft. It was a drab place in a drab town, Wolverhampton, set in the Midlands. Tall factory chimneys belched out black smoke night and day. Smuts landed on window sills, on the benches in the park, on the wet washing hung out on the line to dry. There was row upon row of houses, just like the ones in "Coronation Street". It was not the most cheerful place to live and, in the nightly war-time blackout, dull and dismal.

We were working on Rolls Royce engines that had been built for aircraft but were being converted for use in Merlin tanks. I was shaving down manifolds to two and a half "thou" clearance; that is working to two and one-half thousandths parts of an inch. Standing at a work bench all day was very boring.

One day I dropped a tool. I bent to pick it up. It had rolled under the bench. As I reached in for it, I was conscious of a smell. I can't describe the smell. It was nothing exceptional, just the aroma you recognized when you walked into the tiny sweet shop in the Maltese village where we lived as children. "The Old Lady's Shop" we always called it. She sold not only penny candy but halfpenny and farthing candy too. There were small toys, cigarettes, saints' cards and religious medals, and probably other stuff as well crammed into that front-room shop.

At Christmas her son would build a crêche. She would take us into the back to see it, a wonderful affair! Built up against a wall as a hillside, it had shepherds and sheep, paths winding down the hill between rocks interspersed with moss and small plants. At the bottom was the stable with the Holy Family along with the donkey and cattle. The wonder of it all was the stream, with real water that ran down the hill. How did he do that? I still wonder as there was no water laid on and no electricity in the village.

When I dropped my tool, I was transported by that smell from my drab war-time surroundings to the sunshine of the Mediterranean, the white stone houses, the goats walking along the dusty streets, the prickly pears, the shaded courtyards with their wells and orange trees, and the shuttered windows. That inconspicuous smell brought it all back to me. It was like meeting the ghost of someone you knew well. Just for a few seconds you came face to face with an old friend.

Then it was back to Henry Meadows Ltd. bus factory turned into munitions factory: dull, boring, dirty, and so cold.

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