the commanding officer wanted me to stay, and Frances (our NCO) told me kindly that she likes to hang on to efficient people. Well, I'm all for it. I like it here now. I like my billet companions except the before-mentioned Scotty, but there's hope she'll be going soon. I like the free concerts and cheap cinemas and railway service tickets, and the coming glory of a uniform and being different to the herd. I've also heard there's a library on the Station and that a hairdresser has been installed to shampoo and set for 1s 6d a time.
I'm all for the RAF. I'm beginning to be proud of the company and myself and spent the evening polishing my shoes, washing my stockings and pressing my mac. I like most of all being independent. (I mean free from the bondage of a life at home that there must be in the best of them. You can't grow up till you leave your parents. I know that now.)
I'm sitting writing this before the fire, waiting till Pat finishes with the bath. Upstairs Mike and Frances and Mickey are cleaning their rooms in readiness for tomorrow's billet inspection, and I've just heard them say that another lot of propaganda pamphlets went off from here to Germany today. Despite events like that though you might be miles away from any war here – there's no time to talk about it. Ah ha, this diary now contains a STATE SECRET.
19 October 1939
We had a concert tonight over in one of the furthest aeroplane hangars, and the first half was broadcast as from ‘Somewhere in England’. A great many photographs were taken of the female artists with the RAF and the male artists with the WAAF, and also numerous news-reels. As I was unfortunately at the back of the hall I doubt if my bright camera-smiling face will flash over England. In the interval Joyce and I pushed our way through the mob and got Will Hay to autograph our programmes. The programme was too long and somewhat patchy, the community singing being the best, especially our rendering of ‘I'll See You Again’ and ‘Tipperary’ which always makes me want to cry.
We marched back in the dark with Ely (an NCO) running up and down the long, long line shouting at us to keep in step and not hold hands and not talk and not sing, and then at the gate being nice again and saying ‘Goodnight – sleep well’. Now we're sitting in our bedroom in various stages of night attire and translating one of the German pamphlets illegally obtained and feeling like we're having a secret meeting.
20 October 1939 (early in the morning before reporting for duty)
The night before last the Special Police on the aerodrome gave a dance and forty of the WAAFs, which included all our house except Mickey Johnston, went to it. It was pretty putrid really, the most oafish soldiers, and while Mike, Joyce and Scotty got lifts home, Pat and I came home with a frightful soldier, very fresh, whom we just couldn't shake off. Renee was sitting on the doorstep waiting for us and Mike had the late pass key! After waiting in the cold for about twenty minutes and calling Mike every name we could think of (my vocabulary has increased considerably since living here), we broke in the back window and made hay with Mike's bed and removed her pyjama cord. With that and other things we didn't get to bed till well after twelve and had to be up at some ungodly hour.
Last night I accepted the invitation of the girl next door but one to go fencing with her, but after a long windy walk across the aerodrome we found the instructor wasn't there. However, she took me back and gave me hot soup and we made plans for our lives after the war. I'm never, never going back to shorthand typing. I'm going to Prague, probably to work in the British Institute and write the rest of the day. Mickey did that and will show me the ropes.
23 October 1939
I was ill with a cold all day Sunday after a horrible night upstairs sleeping with Mike as I just couldn't face a night alone with Scotty (Joyce being on leave). The day was pleasant with a continual string of visitors in the morning, tea and coffee and biscuits and books, and an afternoon almost asleep with the sun through the open window, and outside in the garden Renee and Deirdre gardening and laughing at Deirdre's jokes; and then in the evening Mike and Frances buying me chocolate and buns to supplement the invalid diet. Today, by a little push and a kindly fate, I snitched from a more senior typist an all-day job for the deputy commander and worked away at it voluntarily till 7.30 on the reasoning that nothing done for the Powers on High is wasted. It was a list of the girls to be posted permanently to Hendon and we – Frances, Mike, Joyce, Mickey and I are on it and SCOTTY IS NOT. If you know Scotty who smells and doesn't wash and who is loud, man-mad and crude you would understand our rejoicings. We've made wonderful plans for transforming our house when she's gone, washing it out and bringing comforts from home. I am so happy here now – it's a wonderful life.
29 October 1939
Sitting before the fire in the lounge, home on forty-eight hours' leave, a summary of thoughts and events seems appropriate. As the first is always easier I'll start with that and hope that the events will fit themselves in as I go along.
Why I like the RAF. I like having no responsibilities. I like not having to worry about clothes and food and money, and what I am to do next. With all that taken care of and enough for me to do to keep me from being lazy, my brain can give all of its time to its work and here I am positively popping with ideas, and I prefer the ideas. Fortunately both Mickey and Frances write and when Scotty's gone (she goes Monday!) we shall have the downstairs bedroom for a living room and the little upstairs one for us three to retire and work in. Leaving this ‘no outside worry’ way of living to come home has unsettled me. I didn't want to hear how business is bad and how my mother had cried one night missing me. When this war's over I'm going away. I'm never being in a safe job again, and she'll not want it and perhaps they'll be poor and Shell will be a safe steady job. I won't stay. When this war's over, diary, I swear I'll be writing you in the capitals of Europe and the stranger places of the world, but I want not to have to feel guilty about it.
31 October 1939
It hasn't been the best of weeks. It began with my returning from leave not to a cheery household, but to a place so strangely deserted that I thought it was another Marie Celeste. I undressed before a fire someone else had lit, bathed in water someone else had heated, and stared at a half-finished cigarette someone else had smoked and all the while in an empty house. They returned in dribbles, Mike tired and touchy so that we all had to be careful with her for the evening, and Renee bossy and irritating. Since then the house has been parted by a pro Renee and a pro Frances battle over a girl called Reynolds whom Renee has foisted on No. 7 Booth Road.
Last night Joyce and I had an orgy of cleaning to get our room clean now that Scotty has gone (plus, we fear, my blue hairbrush and Joyce's mascot monkey). While Renee spoke German to Mickey so that we couldn't understand and giggled, I scrubbed the floor and Joyce polished it, and between us we got the room immaculate. I like Joyce. She's plump with bright yellow hair and feet that look most attractive from behind when she walks.
I'm very tired. Hence the low level of this entry of squabbling women is neither ennobling nor uplifting but positively fourth form. I must go and have a bath.
7 November 1939
I ought to tell you about the church parade on Sunday and the press photographers and Gaumont British News taking newsreels and photographs of us today, but I've got to report back for afternoon duty in about five minutes and while I write this our NCO is lamenting about
