Such goings on. A girl called Single, known as Boompsie, who works over with 24 Squadron was in a room full of officers and who walked in but DAVID NIVEN, yes, really and truly, cross Single's fat heart. Single, needless to say, sat on immovable, to the surprise of her officer who had now finished with her, and looked and looked at the divine apparition. Rumour has it that he wants to join the RAF and still wilder rumour that he will be posted here. As a result WAAFs no longer go around as God made them, lanky hair, shining face and much dirt but have polished and pushed themselves into their pre-war shapes.
A further story re David Niven comes from Ghisi, the girl downstairs in our new house. She got the message that a Mr Niven was arriving today and please arrange transport. Ghisi arranged and Mr Niven arrived. Ghisi looked at him and left the room. Outside a cackle of officers informed her it was DAVID NIVEN. Back rushed Ghisi to hear an also unsuspecting squadron leader telling poor Mr Niven that all the transport she had been able to arrange was a Singer van. Seeing the van Mr Niven murmured faintly he's get a taxi. ‘Well,’ said the squadron leader heartily, ignoring Ghisi's ‘It's the film star’ in sign language behind his back, ‘get one from Hendon, not Golders Green. It's 2 shillings cheaper.’
This evening I have battled with fire. I lit the bedroom fire five times and the boiler three and conquered them both. I must be like those odd natives with the gift of chucking live fire about. I can now pick up and carry smoking coals without inconvenience. I also used the two inside pages of Ray Atkinson's Daily Telegraph but will be in bed and asleep before she returns.
5 December 1939
Joyce is sitting on the floor with her feet in our beastly little fire which is sulking because I've made it burn, reading half aloud Clement Dane's Will Shakespeare and being anxious because she's forgetting how to act. I am lying on the bed in my issued vest and pants, a jumper, slacks, a cardigan, and a dressing gown and am only just warm.
Last night both of us went to an airmen's dance way down in East Camp and had a very good time, meeting up again only when it was time to return, I feeling especially lucky in finding a North Country airman who could actually dance. We got in about one o'clock and consequently feel more than a little jaded now, especially after the perfectly beastly day. Our dearly beloved, our cherished Mrs Rowley has left us to go to Air Ministry. There's a faint hope that she may only be attached and not posted but it's too dim to comfort our desolate souls. I was surprised to find how much people had been jealous of me working for her and being made an ACW1. One girl (aren't women delightful en bloc?) went so far as to tell me that I was through and would be shipped to West Drayton without delay. West Drayton to the WAAF is what the most dreaded German concentration camp is to a Jew.12 Fortunately I am still well installed here and shall go on working for whoever is our next CO but I shall miss Mrs Rowley.
You remember Eric who brought me home from King's Cross? When I was over at Bunty's on Sunday she told me that he had urgently phoned her up for my address and was much smitten.
8 December 1939
Yesterday I had a letter from Eric – a very nice letter asking me to choose any show I liked for Tuesday night and that he's take me. I've chosen Black Velvet, I will have my uniform and, as Bunty says he's very generous, I should enjoy myself greatly. I am not in the least in love with him but like him very much. I'll tell you about it Tuesday.
11 December 1939
I'm sitting before our fire, throwing out heat for once, having just finished a violent spring-clean of the room. Monday evening is the only time it gets any attention, Tuesday being an inspection. We both of us get up too late other days to do anything but get ourselves to work on time.
Having forgotten to buy any flowers and there being no more in the gardens to steal I've piled four oranges and an apple on a plate for ornament and feel I owe it to the room not to eat them. Sitting where I am I fortunately can't see them.
I wrote to Eric on Friday saying would he ‘phone me over the weekend to arrange a meeting’. He didn't and there's been no word today. I'm resigned now to it having been an illusion, an unreal impossible dream, but oh dear I would so have liked to have gone.
14 December 1939
Having heard me say that I was going visit-making up the road, our beastly little fire is burning with wildest abandon, intent obvious – to be out before my return. Incidentally, how does it manage to burn a whole evening and not heat the room a single degree?
I went out with Eric after all on Tuesday. He hadn't been able to phone because of our telephone being out of order. Bunty and Bernie came too and it was quite enjoyable, but I saw him without the glamour of the rain and the wind and my own laughing abandon, and he's a very ordinary boy.
Last night Joyce and I and her car, behaving itself for once, went to the pictures, smoking ourselves silly, and then coming back, spreading her rug before the fire and eating chips and my sponge cake from home, oranges and the last of Eric's chocolates, and I enjoying myself far more than the night before. We certainly are pampered in the WAAF. In addition to all MT drivers being forbidden to drive anything heavier than 15 cwt and no one allowed to work after four o'clock, we are to have masses of new equipment including still-expected snappy sports suits, TWO uniforms, brushes, combs and towels. The taxpayers are certainly doing us proud.
21 December 1939
Last night Joyce and I had a party. First I drank cider and then I drank gin and lime and then a concoction of Joyce's called Black Velvet and then gin and lime, and then I would have had a glass of sherry except that after two mouthfuls, swallowed in my urgent desire for the experience of drunkenness, Joyce drank the rest for me. I began to get very tired and just couldn't wake up to say goodbye when our guests went, and then the next thing I knew was that strange hands, e.g. Dillon and Firebrace, whose passes extended beyond ten o'clock, were undressing me. I endeavoured to sit up and protest against this outrage but they were both so much stronger than me that the rest of my clothes, to an accompaniment of soothing and infuriating murmurs, were taken from me. I got up a little later and was sick and then despite my shrieks that I wouldn't go to bed I was thrust into the blankets, given a bottle and then ignored when I wanted to talk with them.
Today, chastened and sick in my stomach, I have been the centre of indulgent amusement, and sat tonight pensively sipping a very weak brandy and soda recommended to soothe my stomach in front of the downstairs room fire, feeling that, as an experience, once is enough of getting drunk.
25 December 1939
They let us have breakfast at half past eight, a very nice breakfast of Cornflakes, ham, hot rolls and coffee, and afterwards numerous people came along to our billet bringing with them cakes and fruit and nuts and chocolate and even a wireless and we huddled round the downstairs fire sipping sherry, eating oddments and talking. Lunch was excellent – the inevitable turkey and Christmas pudding with nuts and fruit and beer – and our officers and sergeants to wait on us.13 After lunch we repeated the
