Читать книгу Sand In My Shoes: Coming of Age in the Second World War: A WAAF’s Diary - Joan Rice - Страница 42

This evening is Saturday. I had money and decided to go in to Hendon after tea. I walked round Woolworths, shed some several shillings and returned to Booth Road with arms containing bulbs in a pot, six packets of seeds, a face flannel, a tin of boot polish, a duster, a vase, flowers, needles and cotton, a garden trowel and a packet of soap flakes. Back in my room I've lit my fire, cleaned three pairs of shoes, washed several stockings and am preparing for a snug evening before a now burning fire mending clothes and listening to the wireless, supplemented by toast and Stork¹⁶ and marmalade and climaxed by a bath.

Yesterday evening Mickey and I and other deluded WAAFs went through the blackout and into the wilds of Hammersmith enduring the journey with the thought of the rollicking, witty West End show, Broadway Follies, studded with stars, to which we WAAFs had been invited free. I might say frightful, I might say terrible, awful, boring, tedious, but they only reveal the inadequacy of words. After the third hour, or so it seemed, I was convinced that I had died and was in hell, watching turn after turn in unending procession, each longer, each less funny, each more unbelievably bad than the last. During the interval, Hendon WAAFs rushed to the bar, scruffy WAAFS, obviously from West Drayton, sat still rollicking with mirth in the Stalls. We tossed back whisky and ginger beer and watched in a stupor the longer, duller, apparently unending second half. After came the journey back in the blackout made blue by our opinions of the evening.