Going home

I usually went home on a Saturday, as soon as I had finished work I would wait for a Midland Red bus to take me the twenty miles into Birmingham then another to take me the ten miles out to Walsall. I would do the return trip on a Sunday evening, catching the 6.10 from Walsall.

I was much more fortunate than some of the other girls who came from Wales, Scotland and even Ireland and who were billeted in a hostel and were of course not able to get home for weekends.

'To get to my workplace at the Royal Enfield I had to pass the toolroom and sometimes I could see, through a long window this very nice young man standing at his bench. I was therefore on a nodding acquaintance with him and I got to know him better when I started going to the dances held in the Canteen on the Saturday night. They were quite popular and about 150 people went. I was a real black-country lass and Jack was fascinated by my accent. I thought his Worcestershire accent was peculiar as well, he seemed to add an 's' on to the end of each word. It seems strange that our accents were so different and our home towns were only 23 mites apart.”

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