Sand In My Shoes: Coming of Age in the Second World War: A WAAF’s Diary. Joan Rice

       1940

       7 January 1940

      Joyce and I have pulled the beds around the fire, stolen the pouffe from Peggy's bed downstairs, unpouffed it and spread it around the ground for us to loll against. On the beds are books and papers and cigarettes, on our dressing table are our eats for the evening: a loaf, butter, a Christmas cake and a tin of mushroom soup. Joyce has been lying on the floor battling for sound on our wireless, which is proving even less useful than our bloody little fire.

      We had a church parade today, fortunately in the smaller and considerably warmer hangar with a very enthusiastic parson who urged us to be pieces of rock between interludes of calling us miserable sinners. I regrettably had a long-distance flirtation with the trumpet player. On my return I was then chivvied by the sergeant to (a) walk straight and (b) swing my arms. The first I find impossible, the second objectionable and concentrating on achieving both spoilt the dreams I have to make marching endurable. One of the warrant officers passed a lovely remark on our return to the orderly room: ‘Now that you've finished your God bothering.’

       13 January 1940

      Coming home on leave last night I bought Reader's Digest and found in it this perfect thing. It's supposed to be a song chanted by a four-year-old boy in his bath each night and his mother had managed to copy down this fragment:

       He will just do nothing at all, he will just sit there in the noon-day sun

       And when they speak to him he will not answer them, because he does not care to

       He will stick them with spears and put them in the garbage

       When they tell him to eat his dinner he will laugh at them

       And he will not take his nap because he does not care to, he will go away and play with the panda

       And when they come to look for him he will put spikes in their eyes and put them in the garbage

       He will not go out in the fresh air or eat his vegetables or make wee wee for them and he will grow thin as a marble

       He will do nothing at all, he will just sit there in the noonday sun.

      I went over to Lensbury to have lunch with Barbara¹⁵ today (dear, kind, generous, delightful Shell, they paid all their staff, us serving members as well, a 10 per cent increase on their salary to cover the now increased cost of living and many weeks' back increase as well).

       17 January 1940

      Days go on and on and nothing important happens in them and then on a day like this it positively crams itself with incredible happenings. Little things first, equipment starts to arrive, first batches of uniforms after we have waited so long with promises of enough and coats for all by Friday, because WAAFs have frozen these last few days in the snow.

      The second excitement was my having a preliminary interview with a view to a code and cipher commission, which I don't think I'll be given because they consider me too young.

      I am sorry the description of the day's doings had been such an anticlimax but to be honest with you it's now many days later, I having been interrupted in the writing of it by a caller and then forgetting it and life being what it is the excitement is now ended.

      Anyway it's now 21 January. I have been out every evening since last Tuesday and consequently feel somewhat jaded. We (Joyce and I) have drawn up the beds and are leaning against them almost in a super colossal fire. We have borrowed (with permission) the wireless from Ray and Peggy. The food is on the washstand and we are waiting for two visitors to call on us. I have to clean my buttons, which is rather a bore. I am very dirty because it's too cold to wash but I don't care. I haven't made my bed for days because I have discovered that if I crawl out carefully it will still do. In short, the layers of ladylike-hood are peeling off pretty speedily and doubtless soon I shall smell. Oh well, what the hell.

       29 January 1940

      What a weekend! It began on Friday when Eric was taking me to the Little Review with a sore throat and that aching prelude to flu plus a depression caused by Joyce's Monday departure to a very good Air Ministry job, fortunately quite near Hendon. Feeling frightful and having to meet Eric, I stumbled into a chemist from the rain and blackout and demanded that he gave me something to pep me up for the night. Dubiously and unwillingly he gave me a bright brown scalding liquid like fifteen fiery cocktails combined (I do love alliteration), which not only put me on top form for the whole evening but has kept me there ever since. I enjoyed myself very much, we ate and danced and laughed loudly at the Little Review, which was slick and modern, clever and Oh! The genius of Hermione Baddeley as an ancient prima suprima, colisima ballerina, or the most Novelloist of Novello gipsy heroines! Afterwards we had a taxi back to Waterloo in which he was so good that I am afraid he may be wanting to be serious and he saw me off to Claygate asking if I's see the Gate Review with him on his next leave. He's a very nice boy, I don't want him to be hurt, but I've no feeling about him at all.

      On Saturday evening I met Joyce in town and we went over with some friends of hers to a dance at her old home in Blackheath. It was quite good fun but I would have enjoyed it more had my voice not been so faint but speaking seemed too great an effort to bother over much.

      I was supposed to return to Hendon last night but owing to the snow there weren't any trains. I had hell's delight getting back here (Claygate) on Sunday morning as every electric train