Edna Garbutt

BP gave me a few treasured memories of a cultural nature not available to a girl with a mining village background. When I worked at Elmers School during the first six weeks, I loved to creep into the back of the church to hear someone playing Bach on the organ (could it have been Sir Edward Travis?). Sir Adrian Boult and the BBC Orchestra were in Bedford where I was billeted, so I enjoyed my first experience of a symphony concert. The town was overrun with American airmen in smart uniforms shooting a line. The only bonus was that Glen Miller and his band gave a concert which had us all dancing around the Corn Exchange. Great fun, but sad that shortly afterwards he was shot down in the Channel. I remember visits to London: Dame Myra Hess played for lunch-time concerts in the crypt in St Martin’s in the Fields. Another day out I saw Ivor Novello in the ‘Dancing years’ with a brief unintentional interval whilst a doodlebug went off nearby. I also saw Anna Neagle playing the part of Jane Austin’s ‘Emma’ in a theatre in Northampton. Once, whilst waiting on my own at the bus stop I was offered a lift. This I took (we did in those days) with a gentleman who quizzed me all the way. Could he have been a plant?? However, BP taught me how to lie very convincingly.

A crisis came one day at my digs, when a relation of my landlord arrived in a taxi with his family. They had been bombed out of Balham. The man went back to London leaving his wife and children. A baby, a three-year-old and a very traumatised six-year-old boy subject to nightmares and screaming attacks! They had to occupy the room below our bedroom. Bathroom arrangements were not easy, but when we twice had night duty, sleeping was impossible. Luckily the weather was good, so we coped – with the Dunkirk spirit we took pillows and slept on the riverbank. Even had a swim first. What it was to be young.