大象传媒

I left school at 14 in 1943. My father was very protective and told me just to stay at home and help my mother. I did for a while but was very bored. I`d become more self-confident because I had had to sort out my own schooling after I came back from evacuation. I heard there were jobs goinin a tailors opposite the cinema where my mother would take me for a treat once a week. So one week I told her I was going into the tailors to ask for a job. She said she`d go in with me but I said no - and came out again with a job for Monday!

First I was put to hand work; several of us sat round a table and chattered. I loved that and the freedom. I progressed through all the skills of tailoring, becoming a very accomplished cutter very young. That was where the good money often was, but I didn`t see any rise! A great deal of the work was in naval tailors' shops for the sailors coming into Portsmouth.

If I`d had a less hopscotch, interrupted education I would have liked to have become a nurse, but, as things worked out, I acquired a skill which has held me in good stead for most of my working life.

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