Al Varley Dell

Between 1939 and 1945, there was a lot going on. I have already written about some of my memories from those years. Here's another.
Every evening, the four of us - my father, my mother, my sister Betty and I - sat round our big farmhouse table in the living room for our meal together. At six o'clock, my father would switch on the wireless so that we could listen to the news, which was, of course, mostly about the progress of the war.
Betty and I had little interest in tne news itself, but we were passionate to know which radio announcer was reading it. There were four in rotation: Wilfred Pickles, Bruce Belfridge, Stuart Hibberd and Alvar Liddell. My announcer was Alvar Liddell, so I was proud as punch whenever a newscast began "This is the six o'clock news and this is Alvar Liddell reading it". I can't remember how the others were distributed, except that my sister's announcer was Bruce Belfridge; I never thought much of him. As for MY announcer, I had never seen his name written down, so for me he was Al Varley Dell, in the same way that I believed you went to the Post Office to get a Post Lauder and put things in a chester drawers.
Coincidentally, years later, I was interviewing a young man for a teaching post whose name, intriguingly, was Alvar Liddell. He was the son of MY Alvar, but he seemed to hate that I had recognised his ancestry, so I didn't think it politic to tell him what an important part his father had played in my evening meals between 1939 and 1945.
Oh yes, and I still have the little plate with a picture of Humpty Dumpty on it that was MY plate during those good family years. It is faded, scratched and chipped now, just like me, but it is still in use on boiled-egg mornings as a poignant reminder of Al Varley Dell.