In my pre-war story, my mother and I often used to walk to the railway station at Woodford to meet my father off the train in the early evening.
I remember all the men (hardly any women) alighting on to the platform wearing their bowler or trilby hats, and carrying rolled up umbrellas and briefcases.
One evening, my Father returned home with two Japanese gentlemen, business associates presumably.
They were very polite, and kept on bowing to us.
They brought with them as a gift, the most enormous box of chocolates.
It was made of padded silk, and decorated with a blue satin ribbon.
Another memory of pre-war is of Stanley Bloom, his wife and two children, who had been missionaries out in China, obviously in a very rural area, as the children had never seen water coming out of taps before, and they kept on turning them on and off.
A trip to Brighton was taken in the winter of 1937.
Who took me I do not remember, but the photograph looks like one taken on the pier.
In 1938, my parents and I spent two weeks at a Guest House in Herne Bay, Kent. This was a real treat, as we travelled down and back in somebody’s car.
I wonder now, whether they had a feeling that life, as we had known it, was soon going to be changed forever. This was the only holiday we had on our own, as we usually went to Rye to stay with Aunt Rene.
I remember that during the first week at Herne Bay, I made friends with a boy of about the same age, and I really missed him when he and his family went back home on the middle Saturday.
More of Christine Reason true life story in these articles:
[1] 1922 to 1930
[5] 1939 my story – war declared
[6] 1939 to 1940 evacuated to south coast
[7] 1940 to 1941 evacuated to High Wycombe