Spring 1954 – Autumn 1956

Dear Tash, I am really and truely in love (oh how corny that sounds!) but I really am for the first time in my life — and let me assure you Tash its utter heaven. Pop has given me an open proposal of marriage which I can accept whenever I like and honestly Tash if I feel this way about him this time next year I think I will. I shall be almost nineteen then, and I think if it lasts a year with me it’ll be for ever. I really have never felt like this before. The only fly in the ointment is that I’m scared — because he is 23 has had millions of girl friends and while I feel sure that I love him completely now — what will I think in a year?

Last weekend was the happiest time I have ever spent in my life. Pop slept in my bed all night — without either Shirley or Neville knowing. In the evening we went to the Ball. I wish Tash I could convey to you what heaven it was. It was a warm night very clear, the dance was outside, the gardens were all illuminated, Pop danced divinely, it was as tho’ we had walked straight out of a woman’s own story.

The most blissful moment of the whole weekend was when the landlady in the pub told me not to let my hubby forget to sign the bill!

Dear Tash, By now you must feel as if you have been at Oxford all your life and will always be there. I certainly feel that way about shorthand and secretarial college (vile name) I get progressively worse at typing every day and see my chances of ever getting a job fading very fast. My teacher is a lesbian who bills and coos at us in a mood of flirtatious whimsy (I have absolutely no idea of what I mean by that — probably I feel that I must live up to you in my use of the English language.) Anyway the moral of this sad tale is never be a secretary.

Dear Tash, I am sure Anglo Saxon is pure undiluted heaven compared to the joys of shorthand! I have never found something so diffucult before (you see what it does to my spelling) its completely soulless.

Dear Tash, I do expect an occasional letter — if only to describe to me the life I have somehow managed to miss. I am in bed with flu & Pop is suffering from an attack of sciatica which has rendered him virtually immobile so we have been sitting rather pathetically in our double bed while various doctors mothers & mothers in law bring vast baskets of food and provide pills vile tasting medicines and hot water bottles.

My future as a secretary is I am happy to say becoming less likely every day. I really am quite hopeless at typing. I only wish you were doing it too because as I said before I’m sure you’d be even worse.

Dear Tash, I am thinking very seriously of going to University after all. I think if I do not I shall regret it all my life, and I feel very bad that my academic education ceased at the early age of not quite seventeen. The kind of job I could get at the moment with my limited qualifications that would interest me is very difficult to obtain and the fact that I am married and would have to look at the clock pointedly from 5.30pm onwards would not help matters at all.

Dear Tash, You always refrain from telling me anything but I have heard via the usual grape vine that you have given up M. I do hope you are not too unhappy as I am certain you will find someone much nicer. One of the awful things Frensham has left us with is the feeling that if one is not in love with anyone in particular, life is very dreary, I dont think it need be but it is very hard for me to talk.

Nothing very exciting has been happening lately. We are having our doctor and his wife to supper tonight, he is very nice except he looks exactly like one of the seven dwarfs. We went to the opening night of Hamlet with Alan Badel. It was quite terrible Badel is very short and plump and was dressed in ski trousers so that did not improve matters.

Dear Tash, Actually now that I am a fellow stoodent I can view everything from a different angle (my vision is slightly obscured by my college scarf, and my head is aching from my college beret, luckily I am lovely and warm by virtue of my college blazer, and my exquisite black gown.)

The work however is proving fascinating. For the first time I am able to understand what is going on in the world. Our lectures must be very different from those given at Oxford: they seem to be more like classes, and one can interrupt at any time.

Dear Tash, Why do I never see or hear from you? Is it because Pop is a businessman? Or that I don’t like Universities and Left Review? Or because I’ll only get a fourth?