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The title of the Â鶹Éç series brought back an odd sequence of memories - our own coal house in the back yard bore an image of Goofy.

A strange place to put it - shortage of wartime artistic outlets, perhaps. But on the inside the old coal house (it adjoined the outside toilet) was a chalk drawing of the great clumsy cartoon figure. Untouched for years, it stayed on the door, fading on into the early post-war years.

My junior gas mask was also Disney-inspired - a Mickey Mouse outfit with a front nose flapper - a startling image in the Black Out. It all pointed to austerity - and a heavy ideas dependence on Hollywood.

The Goofy 'etching' was by next-door Dennis. 'Mrs Price's big lad', he looked seriously studious until he peered over his glasses and broke into a high pitched laugh. The background here couldn't have been more unpromising.

Our terraced house in WREXHAM was near the grim mill-like 'Leatherworks' and not far from the equally uninviting 'Joy Centre', a former furniture store that served a warime dance venue. With its iron grille windows, it looked like a prison.

A few years my senior, Dennis was a cheerful copyist with a blackboard chalk in his hand - and his Goofy cartoon came in the same spirit, a surprising effort executed in difficult conditions. The 'back yard' - housing the steel air raid table shelter - needed some embellishment, but then so did our lives. This was then a major mining area and the Gasworks, with its huge coke mounds, was just across the road, but we had little fuel to store....

Oddly, it was chalk artist Dennis who brought home for me the reality of the war. A 'shot down' German bomber was said to have crashed in a field to the east of the town. Later, Dennis returned with a 'war trophy' - a sinister-looking piece of grey metal from the downed aircraft, which he displayed to all who might be impressed. I was - but I refused to touch it.

Decades later, I discovered official confirmation of the incident - a Luftwaffe Heinkel III had crashed at nearby Llwyn Knottia farm, near the then undevelloped Queen's Park in May 1941. Part of the wreckage ended up in the trees. It had been shot down by an RAF Defiant night fighter during a bombing raid on Liverpool. All four of the German crew were killed.