大象传媒

Name Christine Carter
Interview Date 7th July 2005
Subjects covered Entertainment, V.E. Day, War Work
Location Oxford, Marston
People Included

This is an edited extract of a recorded interview conducted by Museum of Oxford with Mrs Christine Carter. It has been submitted to the People鈥檚 War website with her permission. A full version of the interview transcript and audio recording will be available at the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies.

Entertainment
Um well, when I was 18, I think it was 18, I'm pretty sure it was 18, my mother got me a bike, and um used to go cycling, but I used to go walking um about the town I suppose with friends, um on the Sunday afternoon there was what they used to call um pop concerts, but it was entirely different from, it was more Big Band music you know, not what it is now. There were dances on, um, I didn't go to the big dances, but I used to go to the little dancing club, um, and that was about it, that was our entertainment.

V.E. Day
VE Day, was the day, well my husband had already been on embarkation leave, half way through, I think it was halfway through, two weeks of embarkation leave I think it was, but er he brought his bike down to Bristol, and spent a week there, and we were coming back to Oxford to spend a week with his parents, and um on the train, we caught the train from Bristol to Oxford, on the train coming up, people were saying that the war was over, we were in the corridor standing. It went through the corridor, that the war was over, I don't know, I've been told lately, that people knew the day before, but we didn't know the day before, and um it was pretty quiet when we got to Oxford, you know there wasn't any dancing, but that was about 5;00 but when we got to Marston his parents were out in the street with all the neighbours, I had to meet his parents in front of all the neighbours, which was very embarrassing, but then in the evening we went with um, friends from Ferry Road, where he lived, into the town and there was all the dancing and so on. I don't know that there was very much drinking, or any drinking, you couldn't get the beer, that was another thing that was very short, you see drink, and people were just dancing all the way up the High Street, really lovely. Mmm.

War Work
I made uniforms, army and air force uniforms, and then later on we made, um, all over white snow suits, for, I don't know where they were going to be fighting but somewhere where it was cold and icy, you know, but that's all, and then demob suits afterwards when the war was coming to an end.

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