Читать книгу Sand In My Shoes: Coming of Age in the Second World War: A WAAF’s Diary - Joan Rice - Страница 24

On Saturday Joyce and I and two other girls got given tickets for an ice hockey match at Wembley. We had simply super seats and enjoyed ourselves greatly, eating a great quantity of miscellaneous food and cheering immoderately. At about ten we left to see our home bus disappearing into the blackout. After forty minutes of waiting in the rain we were glad to see the next bus, so judge our disgust when the conductor told us that the last bus right through to Colindale went at eight o'clock A.M. After another wait we got a train to Wembley Park, and after a still longer wait in still heavier rain for a nonexistent bus we had to take a taxi back: not very kind on my slight finances. We had to be in by twelve as there had been a hell of a stink the night before when five WAAF came in at five in the morning from a night out at the Kit Kat Club with those forbidden gods, the officers.

Yesterday everybody else in the house was out so I lit a fire, ate a lot, went to bed with a bottle and listened in the darkness to The Thin Man on our wireless, and then slept until woken up by Joyce dropping her Optrex bottle at one o'clock in the morning. On the bottom of her bed was a pile of books brought from her home, all of them asking that I read them, and I'm starting tonight on Clement Dane's Will Shakespeare.

Tomorrow, those of us who were posted to Hendon move over to work at Station Headquarters, I with the job I've been hoping for: secretary to the Commanding Officer (CO), Mrs Rowley – small, dark, handsome, immaculate, sensible, intelligent, fair and so many things so few women ever are. Today I went up and collected my anti-gas clothing which consists of a five-times-too-large coat and a colossal hat. In all this, plus goggles and gas mask, I certainly shan't die of a gas attack. I'll be suffocated long before that.