I was going to a dance at the Wheatsheaf up in Sheldon, and it was full of … air force, Americans, Canadians. There was every nationality there and I was about the only civilian there, you know. I went with … I think it was some of the girls from the post office who were working for my father and, and they … worked behind the counter and they went and I went with them, and I can remember I got drunk that night, the first time ever. There was a tray full of whiskeys that all these men had bought, and it was all left there and I thought … and we were going out and I thought, you can’t leave all that, at seventeen. I thought, no. I just started drinking it, you know. They’d all gone. They got called back, a lot of them. They … they… what they did, now they started … they started cutting people’s ties. You know the tie. Cut a bit off the tie and give you a bit off their tie, and this happened. I was left with nothing. They’d all got bits. I’d got all these bits of American ties and everything. I was going to make a tie out of them but I didn’t, you know. And if I … Wasn’t it funny? [Laughing] When I think about it. That was lovely, though, that sort of atmosphere of friendship.
