Journey to the Self

By Maureen Burns

Maureen's journey began as a child in wartime London. Emigrating to the other side of the world in the late 1950’s meant never seeing your loved ones again. Crossing the Alps in a bubble car, sailing through the Suez Canal, driving in the Australian outback alone, recreating herself time and time again. The fashion world of the 1960's and 70's when Australia and New Zealand were like the wild west. The men in her life and the high cost of loving. This poignant and searingly honest memoir tells the tale of a maverick spirit with an appetite for change, who set out to see the world and to see how it would change her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maureen Burns
• Release date: Jul 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781684196388

Book preview

It has to be said that when I first decided to make the attempt to record my journey through life, though aware that the journey had been long and crowded, I hadn’t taken into account that in exercising the memory thoughts and deeds long buried would come struggling up, taking no heed if welcome or not. Consequently for me this project has become a life experience in itself, for the odyssey that is my life encapsulated within these pages has unexpectedly become a journey of self-discovery. The fact that some of the elements revived are less welcome than others is a truth I should have anticipated, but I did not. So here I am, forced to rewrite my introduction in the context of a woman whose retrospective now includes a journey that has chartered pathways of the self.

It would be fair to say that I have indulged in a somewhat transient lifestyle defined by a restlessness that I cannot explain and which constantly motivates me to seek change.

It’s often been suggested to me that I should record some of my travels, however in retrospect I’ve come to realise that it is the human experience rather than the physical location that has made the most profound impression on me.

Incidents, people, emotions, all tend to be more vividly recalled than the actual geography of it all. When I’m asked ‘did you go to this place or that country?’ my mind will more likely recall a face or a voice or some incident belonging to personal memories that would have no significance for my enquirer. So intense are some of these memories that I find myself mumbling some bland reply and predictably the conversation moves on to the travels and viewpoints of others. So it’s become my norm to clutch my wealth of living to me, hoarding up my precious mind baggage for what? No, the time is right to release my store of anecdotes and so begins my endeavour to do just that!

I began my travels young for when I was a very little girl toward the end of the Second World War I was evacuated to Wales, entirely alone but for travelling there with a neighbour whom I barely knew. I’d never been away from home before and though separated from all I knew and missing those most dear to me, most of the time I was filled with excitement, finding everything and everyone marvellously interesting. During that time I felt a sort of freedom that only being about seven I could hardly comprehend and when I eventually returned to my family I recall pining to go back to Wales, to enjoy again that feeling of separateness from all that was familiar. That particular freedom is now what I understand to be the running barefoot kind that takes place in the mind and the exhilaration of curling ones mental toes in the waters of ‘different’.

Change became necessary to me from then on and is something I require to this day.

For as long as I can remember I have always found that routine soon becomes irksome and easy, quickly boring. Having admitted thus I hope you will forgive me if occasionally I ramble and be generous in allowing me to rediscover and at times discover myself.

CONTENTS

Foreword

PART I – TRANSITION

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

PART II – WHO’S GOT THE MAP?

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

PART III – NEW BEGINNINGS

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

PART IV – SURVIVING THE DREAM

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Afterword – On Reflection

PART I

TRANSITION

1

THRESHOLD

My early childhood years were war years. Rationing, queues, shortages, air raids and bombs were all normal so I was never aware of being afraid. It wasn’t until the war was over that the fear and horror of it all gradually entered my consciousness as the horrible evidence trickled out through newspaper articles, then films and books and later, television. For the young the process of accepting the reality of man’s cruelty had begun.

But let me return to those unenlightened, innocent days of the war years.

Shrapnel collecting the morning after the previous night’s bombing raid was something I wasn’t very good at and continually finding myself one of the envious circle of onlookers at proudly displayed trophies, I quickly lost interest. Collecting spider’s webs on a ‘Y’ shaped twig was far more rewarding, particularly on those bright dewy mornings when each skilful creation was easy to see and so very beautiful. But beauty was soon destroyed and the layers on my twig gave evidence of my childish indifference to the plight of the terrifying builder. Slugs, being disgusting were bombarded with salt and the victim’s suffering observed with fascination. Gleefully ants were boiled alive in their own habitat for they were deserving of their fate because they were detestable. However the line was drawn at stealing bird’s eggs because they were really babies or chasing cats, because they were ‘pretty’. The perceived characteristics of our gender were clearly defined in those days and absorbed almost from birth.

We lived just beyond South London and at that time it was semi-country and a short bus ride conveyed us into the country proper. The only blight on all this was, for me, the ‘Bluey’, a flooded clay pit where we were forbidden to play because it was considered dangerous. Due to this the children loved to tell gruesome stories about how the pit flooded one working day drowning men and horses whose bodies now lay at the bottom.

Fortunately the sweet pleasurable childhood impressions tend to last and far outweigh the odd shiver so I wouldn’t want my reader to suppose my childhood wasn’t sunny.

An over active imagination can have its drawbacks, but oh the delights generated by the wonderful world of our thoughts and fancies. From a little girl I was able to abandon myself to the sheer joy of my senses in a manner that often bordered on ecstasy. I loved to throw myself down in the long grass of the wide roadside verges beside our house that during the war were left uncut. To my tiny form they seemed meadow-like and dreaming, I would look up at the sky and read the clouds and watch the birds sweeping across my vision and drink in the sounds and sight of it all while the tall grasses caressed my face and body. Sometimes I would lie beneath the swaying leafy branches of the numerous trees in our garden and be mesmerized by the sunlight as it fell upon the fluid, rustling leaves. At such times I entered a world of the senses, dreaming on until as I drifted the light became brighter and brighter and I’d touch a moment of photism too exquisite to describe and too private to share.

My sister was five years older than me and consequently would more often than not have to endure me tagging along. How blissfully unaware I was of the irritation this must have caused her for I saw it as my right to be included in everything. Being the youngest of seven children I was continually with people older than myself so my mind had to stretch and keep up and in this I consider I was lucky for in retrospect I believe I enjoyed similar benefits to that of an only child who is continually stimulated by adult company and yet I didn’t have to suffer the drawbacks of loneliness for ours was a noisy gregarious family. From my earliest memories my eldest sister (who was also my godmother) was already married and my eldest brother was already in the navy so during the early war years our family was reduced to five children living at home. When later on in the war my other brother also joined the navy our number was reduced to four. Not too many years later we were down to three siblings until finally I and the sister next to me in age were all that remained and together with my parents it seemed we peopled a unique family of our own.

Due to the war the cinema played an important part in our lives as our mother took us there at least twice a week after school. Once entering that dark place of promised delights and having settled in our seats (often for the second or third time my mother never being satisfied until all her brood had a good view), we forgot the war and the family difficulties we endured at that time and just soaked it all in. Music from the old movies of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette Macdonald (mother’s favorites) or the swing of Betty Grable and Lena Horne filled our tonal world. Drama was provided by such Hollywood greats as Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn and Claudette Colbert for as a little girl of my time it was the glamour of female stars I was drawn to. The fits of laughter generated by partnerships such as Abbot and Costello and Laurel and Hardy seem faintly ridiculous now for such innocent humour seems illusive in our cynical contemporary world. For me the celluloid world provided a view of life outside my own, other countries and other ways nurturing the ambition to see it all for myself one day.

Here were the grass roots of my love for the theatre and the arts. Sometimes the war would intrude with warnings of an air raid outside, but most people remained where they were feeling a certain safety in the solid building and the comforting distraction of the film. When the news was shown (usually heralded by a cock crowing) I would wait impatiently for it to end and return me to the magic of a pretend world. I recall with great fondness how my mother insisted I cover my eyes with my hands when the news included some horror from the real world at war. Once I separated my fingers and peeping through them watched as several black silhouetted figures swung like sacks from ropes tied at the neck. The film was dark and grainy and the sight of those victims of an inconceivably barbaric expression of power was terrible and real and I learned never to look again. I would have been about six years old at the time.

WALES

Due to a serious scare resulting from a close encounter with a ‘buzz’ bomb my going to Wales was as sudden as it was unexpected. When the air raid warning sounded I was on an errand to buy a bottle of Tizer (our usual Saturday treat) and though the lady behind the counter of the little shop tried to persuade me to remain with her until the raid was over I stubbornly refused. Clutching the heavy bottle to my skinny little body I ran as fast as I could and reaching the corner of my street turned to make the home straight when my sky was completely obliterated by a large grey aircraft in descent. There was a frightening rush of air as it swept over me barely clearing the roofs of the houses and came to rest in a nearby street. It was our first experience of these sinister craft and in this one brief visit many houses were leveled.

Being so close to the scene the noise of the impact was terrifying and yet strangely in the midst of this mayhem my mind registered with interest how the blast caused the plate glass of the nearest shop windows to leap out of their frames and they hung there suspended for a fraction of a second in a bizarre frosted replication of their original form before shattering and falling to the ground sending shards of glass everywhere. Like an out of body experience I seemed able to observe all this and wonder at the strange picture it presented while I was simultaneously lifted up bodily and sent flying across the path to land with considerable force on my back against the concrete posts of a garden fence. I stood up, Tizer bottle forgotten and though several neighbours ran out of their houses calling to me to come in my feet were already running and kept on running and running down the street toward the haven of my mother’s open arms as she ran to meet me, desperate to gather me up to safety.

In the annals of war this brush with death may be considered only a minor shave, but it was sufficient for my parents to accept without any hesitation our next-door neighbour’s offer for me to accompany their daughter Nancy who was leaving the following day to visit relatives in Wales. There I would be able to stay for the duration of these awful attacks made more terrible in their effect by the haphazard route they took and the sinister fact that they were unmanned. In no time my bag was packed, but I remember little of the leaving itself. It was probable I was still in shock from my recent experience, but I doubt if anyone considered that then. I know that my little frame with its bony back ached terribly and soon purple bruises traced the contours of my backbone. The more serious legacy became evident in my late thirties, the age when the effects of previous back injuries begin to take their toll.

I do however have clear memories of the long train journey from London to Methyr Tydfil that took many hours and was crammed with passengers and servicemen.

When darkness fell the effect was made total by the enforced blackout, but as our eyes grew accustomed to the night the passing trees and hills were sometimes discernable silhouetted against the darkened sky. Inside our carriage the passengers, uncomfortably pressed together, chatted quietly to one another while some managed to sleep. Meanwhile the soldiers packed in the corridor whispered together and from time to time sent little bursts of laughter into the darkness as they stood quietly swaying with the train’s motion. I sat on Nancy’s lap tired, but wide eyed with the excitement of it all as I watched the red glow of the soldiers cigarettes dance up and down from hand to mouth like glow worms in the velvety darkness.

After arriving in the village of Dowlais and a brief night’s stay with Nancy’s relatives, a place was found for me with a middle-aged couple living around the corner. Early that morning clutching my bag of belongings I was led under a nearby railway arch into a short road of miner’s cottages, the second of which was to be my home for the near future. The road ended abruptly at the foot of a hill that was actually one of a series of grass-covered slag heaps, but referring to them as hills was no misnomer for they were huge enough to fit the description and covered with scrubby grass. So I entered that small cottage and into the large hearts of Aunty Edith and Uncle Moc.

My evacuation lasted many months, but it seemed to me a much longer time during which I stayed with this dear lady and her husband for the whole of the period. She in particular played a very important part in my childhood, becoming for a time as dear to me as any other. Though sometimes she could be quite strict in ways I was unaccustomed to I came to feel a part of their small family and was secure. I slept on a truckle bed against the wall in their bedroom and I believe this played a vital part in establishing a feeling of security for at the time I was very afraid of the dark.

I had to attend the local school which I hated as its very Welshness rendered it obscure and at times incoherent and I felt terribly alienated the whole time I attended there. What I did like however and which stands out so clear in my memory was the chapel where we as a family attended every Sunday morning and sometimes Sunday evening too. It was a place of wonder to me not because of its austere beauty or spiritual ambience (elements wasted on my child’s philistine senses), but due to its agreeably unfamiliar interior and circular design. I had been taken to the odd church service as a very small child, but this was unlike any church I had ever seen.

No spire prodding God’s sky to keep the authorities up there awake and alert. No stained glass windows sending coloured prisms of light to brighten up the gloom of boredom.

No high stone granite arches unyielding like a giant’s ribcage. No effigies of saints, or banners or warlike trappings of any sort. Some time later I was to spend my early formative years at a protestant church-school where I remained until I was eleven and I became used to these outward symbols of an ambiguous faith. Though I emerged from that discipline blissfully ignorant of any real understanding of the Christian religion, I suppose it could be said I developed an awareness of the concept of spirituality.

I suppose I found the strangeness of that chapel in my little village in South Wales exciting because I had never seen anything like it before. Its interior was all plainness and light and following the tenets of their belief was simple and earnest in its design.

The pews curved gracefully around the hall in a semi circle each one with its own little door to divide and close off the rows. A mezzanine floor echoed the sweeping curves of the lower seating and here too each pew was furnished with a little door. Oh those little doors! How I would beg to be the one to lift the latch and open our particular door and what control I displayed as I sat through the service (delivered almost entirely in Welsh), waiting, waiting, for the moment when I was allowed to open that little door again. To please me we mostly sat up in the balcony for the theatre like experience appealed to me. I’m sure the singing was excellent and the speaker eloquent as he stood below us in the centre of his attentive flock, but what most stirred my heart were those delectable little doors. Such was the depth of my ‘spiritual’ need that my cup was full and that was fine.

Later two of my sisters also evacuated to Wales. Eileen was the eldest of our large family and Barbara who since my arrival was no longer the baby of the family. They travelled to Wales together and remained so throughout their short stay. Eileen also had her baby boy with her and it was his safety that was the main reason for coming. I think she was influenced by the fact that her husband who was on active duty with the navy would be reassured that safe in Wales they were away from the bombing. The village wasn’t very big and as they stayed with a family nearby who lived in the main street I was able to see them regularly.

Generally I fitted into the life of Dowlais quite well and I was content so it came as a surprise to learn some years later that some of the English evacuees in parts of Wales had felt they were not really welcome. I have to confess that if it was so then I was blissfully unaware of it. I spent the days and hours chasing here and there on some errand or other, or played with my sister or the village children and can honestly say I remained happy throughout my stay. I also spent considerable time in the company of Aunty Edith who would allow me to ‘help’ prepare the meals and the lovely chewy mint sweets she was so good at making. Sometimes she would meet me after school and take me with her when she visited friends or relatives.

There was a rather dark incident that occurred during my stay which strangely I haven’t thought about until now as my memory responds to the constant quizzing of obscure hiding-places of the past. As she so often did my Aunty took me with her on visits she made to various people in Merthyr Tydfil. This time when we arrived at the house, to my surprise she didn’t allow me to go inside with her, but instructed me to sit quietly on the doorstep until she came out. I waited for what seemed to me such a long time and so I began to stray from the doorway on to the pavement where I amused myself skipping the paving slabs and dodging the passers by. Eventually I tired of this and approached the front room windowsill next to the front door that like most miners cottages opened directly on to the street. I stood on tiptoe to peer in through the lace curtains and then I heard strange noises as though someone was trying to speak, but they uttered struggled sounds that were unintelligible. I jumped back from the window and a feeling of unease swept over me and I wished that Aunty Edith would come out soon and take me home. Eventually curiosity drew me once again to the lace-covered window and I bravely pressed my face to the glass and peered into the room.

I could make out the forms of several people and in their midst someone was seated in a sort of high chair. I couldn’t see their face as my view was more from the side, but the head was monstrously huge and rocked sickeningly from side to side as if its weight were too much for the frail shoulders that supported it. Worse still, it resumed the loud noises that I’d heard before, but this time they were interrupted by choking sounds that seemed terrible to my young ears.

I resumed my seat on the doorstep and as I write I recall the feeling I had then of trying to keep myself blank, trying to negate this horror I had seen. Relief spreads over me as Aunty Edith reappears at the door and taking my hand in hers she congratulates me for being so patient. She promises me a treat for being such a good girl. I never did ask her about the poor thing in that house and how easily the horror was sealed behind the implacable wall of my mind. I cannot remember ever recalling the incident until now as I set down my heart on this cold white page. What a powerful and capricious jailer the subconscious can be, refusing to release its imprisoned thoughts until it wills.

The closeness between Aunty Edith and I grew stronger as time went on and had my mother not been firm in removing me when she sensed this, I doubt how well I would have adjusted on returning home. Many years later my mother told me it was my sister Eileen who wisely took it upon herself to warn her that Aunty Edith was becoming far too fond of her little lodger and she suspected the feeling was beginning to be reciprocated. I think my mother wasted no time for I remember coming home from school one day and bursting in as usual through the front door of the cottage that led directly into the front room, I was stopped short by the wonderful sight of my mother’s back as she sat on a wooden chair in the kitchen. She was still talking to my Aunt who I could tell was upset for when in my happiness I looked over my mother’s shoulders toward her I could tell she had been crying.

Oh the delight of being able to throw myself into my mother’s arms and the joy of seeing her again, but when I learned she’d come to take me home I could not decide if I was pleased or disappointed and within my child’s heart the shadow of conflicting loyalties marred my happiness. Arrangements for our return were made so quickly that it seemed no time at all before we were at the station and it is significant, I feel, that as we walked along the platform my hand was tightly clutching Aunty Edith’s. Once we were in the carriage she leaned through the lowered window of the door and kissed me. Holding on to me as long as she could as the train slowly started to move she began to cry and this was all I needed to set me off too. With its gathering speed my last sight of this dear lady was of her standing alone at the very end of the platform weeping desperately. Throughout all this emotion my mother quietly sat opposite me in the other window seat, probably uncomfortable, but resolute. What else could she do? I asked her about this once and she told me she had really understood the other woman’s agony, but I belonged with my own family and in particular I belonged to her.

After my return I went through a period of pining for my other family and my mother wisely encouraged me to send letters and make little gifts to send Aunty Edith until gradually the need faded. It must have been a painful situation for my mother and one that she handled with a tact that strengthened my love for her. In the early days after I returned from Wales she would sometimes find me tearful and would give me a cuddle and tell me that perhaps I would be able to go and visit Aunty Edith one day when the war was over. I can’t help thinking how hard it must have been for her not to show hurt or impatience, but I guess she made allowances for my child’s treacherous heart.

2

NOTABLE FRIENDSHIPS

I think childhood friendships make a lasting impression, often influencing the development of a person’s character. With this in mind I believe that between the age of nine and thirteen years, the three separate friendships that I formed one after the other were significant in that they illustrate the delicate transition from child to teenager.

A few doors up from our house there lived a little girl whom I admired greatly.

She was always nicely dressed and looked so neat and tidy, plus she had long dark silky hair that I envied. Everything about her was contained while in comparison I always seemed untidy and my skinny arms and legs and lanky frame made me feel awkward and clumsy. In a nutshell I thought she had everything. Unlike my big family hers was a small unit of mother, father and two children. Unlike my well filled and at times very noisy home, hers was extremely quiet. Unlike our London accent theirs was pure Surrey. Her parents had plans for her higher education that were not just hopes but definite goals, unlike mine whose main priority was that we were safe and well. Any aspirations my parents had for their girls were typically conventional for those days and that did not include aiming for exceptional academic achievement.

In short I perceived her parents to be in a class way above ours. He was a white collar worker; returning home each evening with newspaper neatly folded under his arm and carrying a brief case he seemed to my young eyes far removed from our working class lives. His wife was a thin woman with a disabled foot on which she permanently wore a large black boot. It was probably due to this affliction that she favoured longish dresses, usually of some dark print and everything about her was sombre, even her expression.

I can’t remember ever seeing her really laugh and I used to imagine that she harboured some dark and mournful secret. Much later in retrospect I realized that she was probably very lonely for in those times to be handicapped in any way was often made hellish by ignorance as if an unwritten law had been infringed. For this particular lady I imagine her disability was even harder for her to bear since she also suffered from a dreadful case of snobbery. She obviously disapproved of her daughter’s friendship with me and though I sensed this as children do, I would never give in.

We two girls had known each other since infant school, but it was not until junior school that the friendship really blossomed. For two years I would regularly present myself at their front door to ask her to come out to play or walk to school together. Always I was made to wait for her on the porch while the door was firmly shut against the threat I represented. To maintain that friendship my child’s will had to be strong indeed to ignore the distaste and irritation that showed on the face of that good mother whenever she saw me standing there. I don’t know why it mattered so much that I win this battle of wills, but it did. In fact it became vital to me that she not only accept me, but that she perceived me to be as clever and well brought up as her own daughter.

Eventually my friend found the courage to plead for me to come to tea and oh the heady feeling when she began to drop hints that this delight was soon to become an actuality. But when the invitation was confirmed my mother was unimpressed knowing that my prize was of no particular value. Undeterred by this, washed and polished, I danced up to their house and presented my skinny little body at the front door. At last I stepped over that pristine doorstep and bravely walked down the dark and spotless hall with its familiar smell of stewed apples and cloves that to this day always reminds me of that house.

I ate thin sandwiches and drank weak tea from good china and if the act of swallowing was difficult I doubt that it showed on my pale eager face. I remember the relief when, after a meal partaken with straight backs, trembling hands, and long uncomfortable silences we received permission to leave the table. Each little slip of manners or speech was quietly acknowledged by this cold aloof woman and I felt sorry for my friend who in actuality felt no such warmth for me in return. Predictably once I had achieved my goal of being received in that house I gradually lost interest and she too drew away; possibly relieved not to have to rock her boat any more. Later she attended a different school and went on to attend art-college. Perhaps she was smarter than me after all. I moved on to make other friends leaving her safe in her protected nest and I felt no regret. My mother was right; the battle wasn’t worth it.

When I recollect those girlhood experiences there is one episode that has a tenacious grip on my memory probably because it is recalled with some shame. When I was about ten or eleven years of age, my closest friend at the time was a girl who lived in the next street. She had the singular good fortune to enjoy a great deal of freedom because her mother worked full time. Unlike today’s work climate this was unusual and I envied my friend’s freedom not recognizing how lonely she must have been most of the time.

Saturday was the best day of all for we had her house to ourselves all day where we usually devoted the whole morning to our current interest, playing at office work. Lunchtime we spent in a hat shop behind the local Broadway where for a small boost to her pocket money my friend was hired to guard the stock in a very quiet and antiquated salon owned by a rather elderly lady. This came about because we had talked the poor woman into trusting us to watch the shop while she went home to lunch. We enjoyed a delightful hour trying on all the hats and generally spent most of the time hysterical with laughter during which I cannot remember a single customer ever entering the shop.

Best of all was when we could afford to take the bus to Kingston in the afternoon where we tormented the sales staff of Bentalls Department Store, particularly the fashion department by running up and down the escalators the wrong way. We even singled out one smaller escalator that serviced the ladies fashion department directly, for with the uncluttered wisdom of the young we discerned that the staff here perceived themselves superior to their colleagues and probably most of their customers too and so we loved to annoy them by playing on their elevator. Later we would count our remaining pocket money and if funds allowed we’d go into the ABC café where we delighted in taking a tray and sliding it along the self-service rail for a pot of tea and maybe even a shared doughnut. Ah yes! Saturday was a full and happy day for us.

The incident that I associate with shame took place on just such a day when we were on a shopping errand for my friend’s mother. We decided to carry out this assignment on our way home from the hat shop and so made our way to Sainsbury’s in the high street. Now in those days Sainsbury’s shops were very distinctive, with their insignia featured in the mosaic tiled floors and imposing highly decorative ceilings the whole effect promoted a feeling of respect for their assured good service and quality goods, much as a church by it’s interior design seeks to convey an impression of unquestionable integrity.

Dark polished wood cabinets ran the length of the long hall on either side, each one supporting a heavy glass front that revealed the goods within. Above these were narrow glass service counters set at a convenient height for customers to place their ration books and money in exchange for their goods. Today’s supermarket delicatessen counters still follow the same format of separate cheese, meat and fish counters, but there the similarity ends. In those days a customer could watch the rhythmic motion of the bacon-slice as it effortlessly produced cuts to satisfy their individual request, all delivered with a degree of pride and expertise sadly absent today. On the cheese counter a variety of cheeses still in the round, stood ready to be hand cut with wire and wooden grips. At the butter counter a variety of butters were displayed in huge mounds and from these portions were removed to order. Expertly wielding large wooden spatulas the salesman would deftly remove a portion from the mound and pat it into shape and weigh it. What is now synonymous with places such as the Harrod’s food hall was in those days taken for granted as standard service everywhere.

Women stood and queued with a patience honed by wartime shortages, passing the time of day, chatting about current affairs and sharing the latest news. Communication between strangers was much easier then unlike the present day when the need for caution takes precedent. In the centre of the hall friends met in passing and young mothers chatted while their babies in the comfort of highly sprung upright prams waited in complete safety outside the store.

Into this noisy bustling place full of tantalizing smells competing and blending with each other amid the sounds of commerce echoing under the great high ceiling, we two little girls placed ourselves in the relevant queue our chins just level with the glass service shelf. Here at eye level temptation presented itself in the form of a stack of two half crown coins left by the previous customer. To my shame when the assistant turned away it was me who first nudged my friend to slide her ration book over the coins and with surprising ease she scooped them down into her shopping bag. Once outside the shop we divided the spoils between us, but our euphoria was short lived. As we made our way home unease gathered uncomfortably with each step of the way and as guilt began to drive all pleasure from our minds we were only too eager to part and go to our respective homes.

Later in the afternoon there was a knock at the front door and I came downstairs from my bedroom (where I‘d spent the time wishing I could turn back the clock) to answer the door. How fortunate it was me who did so for there stood a man and a woman who after checking my name instantly confronted me about the missing money. They hinted at the dire consequences of theft and miserably I confessed to my part in the crime and willingly returned the half crown that was my share of the booty.

The shame that remained with me for so long wasn’t so much that I stole the money or that I was found out, but that they were able without difficulty to get from me the name of my accomplice. For many years it didn’t occur to me to wonder how they knew my name and where to come to reach me first or that there was a possibility that they might have come to me last?

All I could think of at the time was that I had got off lightly and with hindsight I realize how discerning those people were in judging my stress at the time as sufficient to teach me a valuable lesson without the need to take it further. They didn’t even ask