大象传媒

2 鈥� Muriel Pogmore had a Physiotherapy and Chiropody practice in High Street during the War:

鈥溾�t was a very thriving (practice) I might tell you. I kept it on for a year after I was married because my husband hadn鈥檛 got a proper posting, and then when he did he got one at Arbourfield which is the Corp鈥檚 Headquarters and he got a quarter, because all the quarters had been used for billets and so I had to sell my Practice, and Geoffrey Parker arranged that for me; it was extraordinary, it ran into quite a high figure, but the woman who bought it came with a huge suitcase and Geoffrey Parker was there, and when she opened it she paid me all in pound notes and five pound notes, and I can see Geoffrey and me kneeling on the floor and counting these notes, extraordinary thing, she had obviously made money on the side somewhere, I don鈥檛 know. So she took it over and she ran it for some time.

I had a bit of luck you see really, because it was towards the end of the War when there was a lot of doodlebugging and bombing going on in London, and all these so-called aristocracy in the county wouldn鈥檛 go to London, and so they found this obliging little woman whom they鈥檇 never have thought of coming to normally for their physiotherapy or their chiropody, and they came to me, and so I was terribly terribly lucky; it was a bit of bad luck generally, I had the people from Ragley Park you see, the present Lord Hertford and his children and I had people like that who wouldn鈥檛 run the risk of doodlebugs and things like that in London - they all came to me. Mrs Flower, Sir Fordham Flower, Mrs Spencer Flower and all these people from all round who used to be allowed petrol just to do their shopping and for their medical purposes, and I also did very well because the girls I employed would never have come to a practice like mine, they came from Birmingham and there was one evacuated from London, and so the bit of bad luck that was general really did me quite a bit of good. (What with) the (reduced) train service and petrol (shortage) people just couldn鈥檛 go up to London, and so that鈥檚 how I managed. I had a little girl, God help me, who used to cycle in, and she had just left school and she cycled in from Ettington every day, and I gave her fifteen bob and she was the receptionist, and that was considered not a bad wage, and she just made the appointments and answered the phone.鈥�

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