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In 1938 I left school I remember it was pouring with rain I was 14 yrs 1 month. I started at Edwin Jones counting house while sale was on and I had not had any training. We were at he end of the tube system. I was worried to death as I had no experience with money and giving change. At the end of the day the tills would add up wrongly and I convinced myself that it was my fault. Years later a friend told me that I needn’t have worried because they were always wrong at the end of the day. My aunt wanted me to go to Cheltenham to do errands for her while she looked after someone with phlebitis. I was very happy about it as I would be living with my favourite cousin. I stayed there for few months then came home and I got a job round the corner from where I lived. I was living with my mum and dad, a foster brother and my own brother. I went round to St Leonards Road and got a job in Mr and Mrs Edwards Sweet Shop/ newsagents. When the war came and the trains with the newspapers on were late the children had gone to school so I delivered the papers, I used to call on my mum for a cup of cocoa. I came on holiday with aunt and uncle, father worked on the railway got free passes and privilege tickets. My mother never wrote for the tickets but hopped off the train and ran down the station my brothers and I would sit on the train and worry about whether she would get back to the train, she had to shout to the porter once to hold on because we were on the train. I worked till eight o’clock on a Saturday and after a bit I got restless, my mother had worked at Harris the tobacconist so I wrote to them and worked for them for a couple of years We use to have to count out the cigarettes, they were loose, long and thin, they were rationed. I stayed there for a couple of years then went to Beales. I was working at Beales in 42. It was bombed on a Sunday dinnertime. On the Monday we heard that it had been bombed. On the Monday I caught the bus to the top of the hill walked down Dalkeith steps and we were sent to Beales to meet on the fashion floor. We had our holiday and while they did they moved everything to Woodhouses. Destruction very bad, it was pouring with rain and it all looked so miserable. The bomb went off at 4 minutes to 1. Nov 1940 we had a land mine fall at the corner of St Leonards Road and Stewart. There were four fell that night, Alma Road, Westbourne. We got down to the living room and the windows and doors were blown in. Friday 16 Nov at 3.25am. It was the Westbourne ones that woke us. Fell behind the faggot and pea shop on soft ground. So we were lucky there was not much damage. The vicar of St Andrews saw the land mine come down and the wind take it up and over the shops. I was working in St Leonards and went round the long way so I did not see it. My dad managed to work on the house to make it weatherproof again. Dad stood the door up to keep out the draught. It was a solid door and fell so heavily every time somebody came round. Everything carried on. My future husband was a messenger boy for the fire station. Telephones were very limited at that time. He was a scout and I remember seeing him on the bus and thinking what a nice looking boy he was. I use to go to the ice rink, they had a band there Percy Pearce. Skating was a very popular pastime. My dad knew all sorts of people and arranged with the attendant on the back door that if we tipped the doorman on the back with sixpence he would let us in and all we would have to pay for would be our skate hire. The first day I went to work 5 Jan 39 I went with a friend to see Alexandra’s Ragtime Band at the Regent in Westover Road. There was also a cinema called the Westover as well. In Winton we had the Continental cinema it was called the Plaza in those days, they used to have double seats in the back rows. Further down was the Ritz and then the Modern. I remember coming out of the cinema and I had blisters on my feet, I use to lark about a lot I put my gloves on my feet and walked to the bus stop. I remember the Electric up by Marks and Spencers and the news cinema in Albert Road. When I was called up 3 choices, either nurses aid in Southampton Hospital or in munitions or working in a NAAFI canteen. They had conscripted some hotels. I chose the NAAFI at the Durleston, opposite was hotel conscripted by the health service. I had a new boyfriend and he had arranged for me to have a birthday cake made. I had to walk down a long room and was very embarrassed. We wore blue overalls with caps, after having worked at Beales with a smart black dress I shuddered at too big overall. We slept and ate in the hotel. The rooms were stripped and filled with trestle table and this is where the men ate. We used to have afternoons off and were back at 6.00. We used to dance at the tea dances in the afternoon so we did not mind those hours. There were Americans and Canadians there not many British because Bournemouth was saturated with the pay corps. I moved to another canteen at Toft House in Manor House that had been taken over by the Record office. When they handed the apartments back they took the records office out to Kingston Lacy and we had to go out there by coach and it was very cold. We used to have to scrub concrete floors. I got restless again and my manageress encouraged me to get another job and I went to work for the GPO. That was my best job. I was in Directory enquiry on this girl came on and said do you know someone who takes lodgings in Westbourne moved in with mum and eventually married my foster brother. A lovely Auntie Connie was my mum’s best friend. She worked with a friend Vi who had got into trouble and had a baby. She had this baby in a home but I had to take this baby form the babies homes so my mum took him in when his mother married John was five or six they were going to put him in a Shaftesbury home and I wept. But he did not go. Went on a tram there was a long seat just inside I was fours years older than him getting on for six trail to Southbourne we lived at 205 went into the house and the penny had gone for the gas. He fell down tied him down His mother kept in contact with him loved opposite us. The husband did not want him so we kept him. He was more like my dad he had all his mannerisms. I remember mum coming home with my brother and I was not sure I was going to like him. At the bottom of the gardens in Stewart Road there is a long brick wall and it was built to separate the gentry from the workers one side was the Meyricks and the other was Malmesbury. Mum had 5 Ration books, one at Home and Colonial the grocery store, two at Mr Smiths, small shops and two at Mr Frost so that any offers or extras that came she had a choice of where she went. You had to register with the shops. When we were called up in the NAAFI we were given rations and I remember eating my butter ration all in one go. We had a cook that was very famous for her doughnuts and we were able to buy them from her. Clothing my first coat was a grey straight one and I was very proud of it. I got married in 53 and remember being given my ration by the butcher. I at the beginning of the war we were wearing bows or fresh flowers in her hair. I got engaged to a pay corps fella but he went abroad and it was out of site out of mind. Ken and I broke off during the war he was in a special unit and use to do the run from Barnet to Bletchley Manor. I remember walking to Cemetery Junction to save a halfpenny on the trams. I remember the boy next door chose me as his wife because I could run the fastest. When Alma Road was bombed the boys went to Portchester Road and the girls did as well but not together. Alma Maters have an annual convention near the time where the bomb went off 16 Nov. We do something most months. I was cycling back to work and looked down the road and there was this bay covered in grey ships and back at the NAAFI we had this rush of men from the Welsh Regiment, big burly men so different from the quiet Americans and Canadians, the pay corps were mostly men with some disability, poor eyesight etc. The pier was blown up and barbed wire all over the beach. I remember a bit about Dunkirk because they used the schools for the refugees. The teachers had to volunteer to cook and clean for these soldiers because they were unable to have lessons there. Father worked in New Milton he was a Carman working for the railways. He delivered round New Milton. Transferred to Poole, used to drive a ‘Mechanical Donkey’ a three-wheeled articulated lorry. There was a British Restaurant in the Alma Road School the part that did not get bombed and another one in the Pavilion. They found exercise books and things miles away from Alma Road. We had a Morrison shelter but I don’t remember sleeping in it. Dad did try digging the garden to put an Anderson shelter but he just kept digging up gravel.

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