SON                How will that thing protect us dad? Isn’t it safer to stay indoors? Those pieces of metal look a bit thin to me.

 DAD               It’s not just metal son. We build the shelter with the metal, then we plonk it in this big hole that I’m digging, and then we pile all the soil back on top of the roof to cover it.                

SON                Why is that safer than staying in the house?  

DAD                Because if a bomb falls on the house, the roof and ceiling might collapse and fall on our heads and squash us flat as pancakes. 

SON                Oh. (pause)  I don’t like pancakes dad. 

DAD                I know son. That’s why I’m building this shelter. (shouting) Mind where you’re putting your feet son! Those pieces of metal cost me seven quid! 

SON                Seven pounds?? You’ve been ripped off dad! Sammy down the street said they got a shelter for free! (has a sudden thought) Do you think they nicked it?

DAD                Course not Tommy. They’re not the easiest things to steal, Anderson Shelters. You can hardly stick half a dozen sheets of corrugated steel in your pocket, can you? You’d have to carry them on your head, and that’s a bit obvious isn’t it? And I haven’t been ripped off. Teddy’s dad’s not very well paid, so he gets a shelter for free. I earn more than £5 a week, so we have to pay for ours. 

SON                When it’s built, will it protect us from the diddlybugs dad? Them ones what you can hear for a bit then they goes all quiet and you have to wait and see whether they drop right on your head? 

DAD                You mean the doodle-bugs son. Well, if one does fall right on our head, or even right on the shelter, that’s us done for. But if it just misses us, the soil and metal should stop us from getting killed.   

SON                Oh. Can’t we just go down in the cellar like Uncle Sid’s family do? We’d be safe there.    

DAD                No son. 

SON                Why not? 

DAD                Because we haven’t got a cellar. 

SON                Oh. Couldn’t we go in Uncle Sid’s cellar then? 

DAD                No son. Uncle Sid lives on the other side of town. When the sirens go off we have to get safe as soon as possible. We haven’t got time to run to your Uncle Sid’s house.