THE BEST IS YET TO COME

One of the first things I did after becoming engaged was to start a ‘bottom drawer’. In days gone by, this was known as a ‘Hope Chest’. Young girls on reaching puberty were given a wooden chest. Into this went various items of fine linen, stitched, embroidered, and trimmed with hand made lace by the young lady in question, in the hope that she would one day marry and use these items in her own home. The modern version of this was the bottom drawer or, for me, a large suitcase.
Each payday, when I received my wages; I would look around the shops and choose something to buy for my bottom drawer. It might be as big as a tea set, or as small as a wooden spoon, whichever caught my fancy or, more likely, whatever I could afford that particular week.
Arthur and I had a notebook, which we’d designed and devised over numerous cups of coffee. Each page was headed with the name of a room, such as lounge, bedroom, kitchen, and beneath each heading, we listed everything we could think of. Firstly, things that we needed and secondly, additionally things we would like to have. As each item was purchased or given to us (we received a lot of engagement presents), we ticked them off in the book and wrote down how much they had cost us. I still have this notebook, and the low prices we paid for household items are really amazing.

I had now been working for Williams Brothers for over a year and had never received a pay rise. We were saving really hard to get married, and I decided to ask my boss for more money. I felt quite nervous; I’d never had to do this before. The boss was a woman not liked by the staff, which did little for my confidence. I stood before this ‘dragon’ and felt about two feet high. She let me have my say, then politely pointed out that, since my switchboard hadn’t and wouldn’t be getting any bigger, there really didn’t seem to be any grounds for giving me more money.
I was deflated, disappointed and angry, and beat it hot foot to the employment bureau, a few doors down the road. When I told them how little I was earning, they were absolutely aghast.
‘We can get you much more than that,’ they said, true to their word, they did.
I went to work operating a double-position switchboard at Canda, a clothing factory in Islington. Canda was the trade name for the manufacturing side of C and A Modes. String the letters C and A together and, hey presto, you have Canda! There was a little more travelling to do, but my wages jumped from three pounds five shillings (£3.25) to five pounds, an amazing and very welcome pay rise.
Our most daunting task as a newly engaged couple was the task of finding somewhere to live. This had to be achieved before we could set a wedding date. There was absolutely no chance of buying a house, the cheapest being two thousand pounds, so that people like us just weren’t in the running. We could only hope for rented accommodation, but that too was virtually unobtainable due to the acute housing shortage that followed the war.