In this evocative memoir Alastair Tompkins reflects on his experiences as a wartime evacuee transplanted from the East Sussex village of Polegate, near Brighton to the relative safety of rural West Yorkshire.

Yorkshire and its inhabitants provided something of a culture shock for a young Sussex lad who had not previously ventured away from the genteel South of England but Alastair was fortunate to be taken in by Nellie, a kind and welcoming Yorkshirewoman, her husband Harold and son Jack, who soon set about acquainting their young guest with finer points of the local dialect and customs.

Before long young Alastair has acquired a broad Yorkshire accent and a pair of wooden-soled clogs and is well settled in to his home from home. His recollections of his Yorkshire sojourn are a delightful evocation of childhood during the wartime years, when the mundane events of everyday life in rural northern England seemed far away from a world at war.