the faint sound of other WAAF voices on the billet the other side and a few children climbing in and out of air raid shelters, left me at peace. I had no thoughts beyond the moment; all emotion had run out of the world; it was only the pleasant day and the earth heavy under my fork and my own satisfied tiredness. All this is probably just my way of saying there's something in this gardening racket after all.
After, I came in to find Mickey roasting before my fire and we drank her soup, toasted my bread and ate my mother's marmalade. This morning I got an invitation to Barbara's wedding on 27th of this month and Our Annie, the hearty CO who has taken over from Mrs Rowley, has given me the afternoon off to go to it.
9 March 1940
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.
11 March 1940
How nice it is to listen in the mornings to the BBC broadcasting physical jerks17 when one has no intention whatsoever of doing them. Our Annie and I have practically no point of common interest. She's a large strapping woman with appalling legs and heaps of hearty laughter. Her spiritual home is in a damp tent with a smoking campfire and a brood of nasty little Girl Guides. In fact, I believe between being a general's daughter she was once a Girl Guide captain.
I went with Mickey and Frances to the pictures tonight and came back arguing about politics and the future of England. Obviously England is a declining power; obviously Communism has come to stay; obviously the breaking of British class barriers is a long overdue necessity if the country's ever to survive. Do you realise only 3 per cent of our populace, the lucky percentage with a public school education, can ever hope to receive any of the really first-rate jobs? Oh, the colossal conceit of a country, to limit its selection of brain ability from a future 3 per cent. There is so much wrong with the world, so much in a nightmarish muddle. Still there is this consolation: it's a bad world but it's not a dull one. It's got evil and stupidity and muddle but it's also got excitement and adventure and variety. For the cynical, for the without illusions, one can still live zestfully and not yearn too unbearably for Utopia.
15 March 1940
I am home and tired, I've been out every night this week. Tomorrow morning I shall lie in a soft warm bed and stretch out a languid hand to my bell, which will bring my breakfast to me. Tonight I shall dissolve the grime of ages (three days and nights) in a large boiling bath.
I've got to give up my room. The corporal whose rightful residence it is has decided she wants it and I am to have the front double room, so very much more to clean. I am sick and sorry; I like my room. I like the sixpenny and flourishing plant on the windowsill. I like the string from the light via the door to my bed which enables me to extinguish both light and wireless without getting back into the cold. I like it because it is little and easy to warm and has clean windows and a polished floor. I wish I were a corporal and not so tired. I am writing this all odd: it was going to be very artful introducing all the week's events in so natural a manner that one slipped easily into the other.
Allow me, says she in her best pompous author manner, to take you from my usual haunts of Booth Road and Claygate and that part of London encircling Leicester Square into the hitherto unexplored region of Hendon Aerodrome. If we are lucky, as we enter its gates, the police on duty will salute me and make me feel very smooth. Why then, reader, do I hurry? Why have I paid unusual trouble with my toilet and clutch in my hand a limp paper when usually I saunter past late, untidy and sucking a Zube? I am going to a Messing meeting as a representative of WAAF airwomen, that's why – a role strangely thrust on me by Our Annie.
We gather in the messing officer's room, the WAAFs waved politely to chairs, the airmen soldiers standing self-consciously behind us. After a pause, which I passed looking out of the window unaware that I was expected to speak and thinking how rude it was that nobody did so, I, as WAAF representative, am asked to complain first. I blushed a lot and said the WAAFs wanted more fruit.
That noted, Pilot Officer Burton turned to the men and the fun began. They said their fried bread was hard. The sergeants, two harsh-faced individuals, said it was inevitable on account of the ovens; Pilot Officer Burton strove courageously to pacify both parties. Throughout the battle, which travelled through hard fried bread to bread at dinner to too thin tea, he remained courteous, fair and eternally anxious to help the men. This was definitely one of the better Service customs. The men get direct to the officers with their complaints.
As a result of this morning meeting, far from finishing my work at the customary 4.15, when I left at 4.45 it was yet undone. At 5 p.m. when I was preparing to go to town, a trembling WAAF informed me that an angry Annie was on the phone demanding my return to finish my work. I returned swearing all up Booth Road and by the time I got to her my anger had surprisingly gone. I accepted, not very well concealing my smiling lack of penitence, her and Henderson's bawling, so that at the end they were smiling too. I like Henderson, she is small and attractive and tough.
20 March 1940
WAAF whisklets –
Mr Dunne, giving Frances Baxter a packet of Smarties: ‘You've got a habit I don't like.’
Frances: ‘What's that?’
Mr Dunne: ‘You breathe.’
Mr Dunne is a civilian clerk under whose care we WAAFs at Station Headquarters are. He has promised to lift me one of those ‘You never know who's listening’ posters for my billet.
Mickey Johnston has a driving test. ‘Don't let her drive inside the aerodrome,’ warns a sergeant to the girl who accompanies her on her test, suspecting Mickey's ability with tragic truth. From the WAAF Mess to the aerodrome gates Mickey takes the wheel. She flashes down Booth Road, her companion beginning to be uneasy and success and speed intoxicating her, and as she takes the corner sends two milk cans hurtling down the road. She misses a swearing stag-like leaping wing commander by inches and jams on the brakes to a halt in front of the frozen face of a station policeman. Mickey has not driven for
