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I sat on the hard, narrow bed and surveyed my new home - a cubicle measuring 8' x10' - its boundaries marked by dark green curtains. Here I would live, together with twenty-three other cubicle dwellers, in the longest room I'd ever seen - part of the old convent no longer needed by the nuns. Everything was new and strange - I waited to feel afraid or sad or homesick but instead there was just a feeling of excitement, of eager anticipation that would keep me awake for most of the night. School days had been happy - the fact that we'd been poorly educated was not in dispute. `The War' had intruded and changed our childhood. Many teachers had joined up, fighting for us instead of giving lines and reminding us to wear school hats and caps once classes ended; some would not come back. The older teachers remained and worked hard, they were supported by kind, gentle folk who never raised their voices, retired colleagues, country vicars, and the odd refugee, all pressed into service and coping valiantly with the chaos of extra numbers as evacuees came flooding into our classrooms. Formal education took a back seat as we learned how to get on with one another, forged new friendships and made a few unexpected discoveries (I `discovered' music, which up to then had consisted of hymn tunes and the few gramophone records owned by my parents —`Lily of Laguna' seemed to be TOTP). Now I couldn't decide which record I liked most - was it Vera Lynn singing the `White Cliffs of Dover' or was it a magnificent rendering of the Sanctus from Bach's B-minor Mass? (I remain as catholic in my musical tastes to this day).

Ö÷²¥´óÐã life was fine and unquestioned. We lived in the centre of a small market town and seemed to know most people. Our front-room window looked out onto the main street so we were never bored. So familiar were we with oft-seen passers-by that we (my brother and the evacuees and I) could almost judge when Mrs. P. had new corsets, our only concern being where did they get whalebone in wartime? Despite the terrible things happening in the world around us - and we were aware of them because we heard adults talking in hushed tones, and we saw them grim-faced or tearful as they listened to the news on the wireless - we had a great deal of fun and an extremely `rich' childhood.

So .... A secure background, kind and loving parents, the most gentle of grandparents living nearby, and a strong family tradition of Methodism - Chapel and Sunday School three times on Sundays, religious books only on that day and 'NO BALL GAMES'. Our social life revolved around the chapel, with evening activities to keep us on the right path. I was a fat, bespectacled, spotty teenager - a real plain Jane, but at sixteen an ugly duckling who aspired to be a swan. I knew of course that there was another side, knew because the War had brought a breath of different air into our lives. I knew now that American soldiers gave girls stockings in return for kisses. I knew that in London ladies wore silky cami-knickers - I had, after all, seen some dancing merrily on our washing line, sandwiched between my navy-blue school knickers with a pocket in the leg for your handkerchief (or sweets) and my shapeless sickly-green pyjamas made from parachute material which Mum and I had queued for hours to obtain. I'd watched entranced as Pearl - our `Lady from the Ministry' - painted her lips scarlet with real lipstick (my own experiments in this area had been carried out using the red dye from a well-licked liquorice comfit). I'd seen the beautifully orchestrated movements of the young men and women as they jitterbugged in the square and on top of the air-raid shelter to celebrate V.J. day - how I'd longed to be thrown into the air by a handsome U. S. warrior (and in my dreams it hadn't mattered if I too showed a few inches of bare leg above a silk stocking). I'd heard the shared confidences of `our' Land Girls - they came to the home to have baths although they lived in the big house near the Green; my Methodist upbringing had not prepared me for such secrets. I knew that married people had rows - not at all like the American films where love and romance meant that gifts of flowers and gentle pecks on the cheek were all that happened until you grew old together and died.
During the war, many government offices were re-located in country districts and the secretaries needed accommodation as well as the evacuee children - and so we got Pearl. One weekend, Pearl went up to London and brought back her sister Lucy with a ten-day old baby - to save them from the doodlebugs. So we all moved bedrooms again to make room for them. Lucy was married to Frank - a fighting soldier who had once been a plumber. I knew what he looked like because his photo was in a very large frame on Lucy's bedside cupboard. He was in uniform and had written "To my darling wife from Frank with love" in large scrawling handwriting, the diagonal lines obscuring much of his khaki battledress. There was such excitement when we heard Frank was to come home on leave. My parents moved bedrooms again so that the young couple could have the double bed. We went to bed early while Lucy stayed up to greet Frank alone, just as if she'd been in her own home. I was soon awoken by raised voices and angry argument - what a rumpus! It seemed that Frank had gone into the bedroom to find his photograph replaced by one of Bing Crosby; in righteous indignation he'd taken Lucy's heart-throb and flung him to the floor. Lucy was affronted and told him so in no uncertain terms - the row began. In the morning, Lucy told me that she had slept in the double bed with her arms around Bing whilst Frank slept on the lino under the bed (It took me a long time, years in fact, to understand the emotions which must have caused this state of affairs).

I did join the sixth form, but this did not lead to great educational success. The other two girls knew they wanted to be teachers, so they concentrated on English. The six boys got stuck into Maths and Science. Unmotivated, and bored, I read a few books and attempted to look busy when a teacher appeared. Eventually a visit to the employment office was arranged. "What do you want to become?" asked the man behind the desk - "A matron of a children's home or owner of a homemade cake-shop" I replied. "Would you mind leaving home?" he questioned. "Oh no" said I.

So there I was in my small space - plucking up the courage to take the long walk up the avenue of green cubicles in search of the bathroom. Tomorrow I would have a uniform; tonight I would remember to say my prayers.

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