Happy days (From Malvern Gazette)

Happy days

10:34am Friday 24th August 2007 in Letters

RARELY a week goes by without letters complaining of travel problems. Such letters have set me thinking of many days gone by. In fact wartime days, as teenagers and the race to catch the last train back to Colwall.

Our main entertainment was dancing, often at the Winter Gardens. The dances started and finished early, remember there was a war on.

The train left at 9.40pm. As a consequence we had to leave before the dance ended. The train was never late so if we squeezed in one more dance it meant running, and I mean running, from the dance hall to the station. It was often already in the station huffing and puffing - steam in those days.

There were porters in those days and on hearing us clattering down the road they would shout to the guard on the other side of the track coming over'. We would then belt along the platform down the underpass and up the other side with the guard holding the door open as the last of us fell into the train.

All this was better than being confronted by a very angry parent for missing the train! There were often young men we had met at the dance, only too willing to escort us to the station. Little did they know how they would be expected to run like greyhounds once we left the dance. Often the last they saw of their partners were their heels as they joined the charge to catch the last train home.

Talking of heels, one night the guard accidentally shut my sister's shoe in the door, leaving her minus a shoe. The problem was only solved as to how we were going to get her home with only one shoe, when the door was opened at Colwall, to find it on the footplate where it had travelled all the way home.

Those days brought much grief to many families not to mention complete blackout, food shortages and everything rationed but in an odd sort of way we had tremendous fun - we were as fit as fleas and did not know the meaning of fat.

As if to prove we were not just a bunch of crazy heartless youngsters, I will always remember the long rows of white carriages with huge red crosses on the top of them, parked in the sidings of Malvern Wells station. They brought the wounded Americans back from the Normandy beaches. Their sacrifices have allowed me to write this letter, with some very happy memories.

MRS MARGED VERBIST, Priory Road, Great Malvern.