Page 12 - Through a glass brightly

Val Turner neé Goatman (Val T.)
I'll start with primary school. I was not a Barnet girl. My primary school was Elstree Church of England School. I lived in Borehamwood and resided in Elstree Film Studio in a large house within the studio grounds My father became the General Manager of the studios and I had an interesting life living there for 15 years until I got married. I managed to pass the 11plus and chose to go to QEGGS rather than to Borehamwood Grammar School. Partly, I think because my headmaster's daughter was there, at that time in the Upper fourth. Only two of us from Elstree went
to QEGGS, the other being Linda Dawe but she was put in IIIB not IIIF. My start at the school wasn't great. As you will remember we had to take a Health Certificate with us on admission and I had to declare that my brother had mumps. So I was immediately packed off home to quarantine for two weeks (Sounds familiar in today's situation!) At the end of my quarantine my mother had succumbed to mumps so a further two weeks were imposed and towards the end of that time I went down with it too!! As a consequence of all that I missed the entire first half of my first term by which time everyone had got to know each other and I was behind in all subjects. Lucky for me, Jenny befriended me quite soon, partly I think because we share the same birthday! We became good friends, I even stayed with her family for a week or so during the bus strike in 1957.
Well, I survived at school, although I was in the bottom division for almost every subject but I did achieve 5 O' levels. I decided not to go on to A'levels so, as I was intending to become a nurse at that stage I decided to do just one year in the VIth form and do Human Biology O' level. During that year I changed my career intentions and decided to go on to do a secretarial course. My father had had an excellent secretary who had done her training whilst working at London Transport and the idea of doing a secretarial course whilst being paid, appealed so I applied to them. Carolyn Beale who was doing the one year Lower VIth form course too decided to join me. Whilst sitting in the waiting room for our interview with LT we compared birth certificates and discovered we were born in the same nursing home for Army officers wives in Fulmer Buckinghamshire - small world!
The normal procedure at LT was to go into their own secretarial course in their HQ at 55 Broadway London but at the time we started they had decided to experiment by sending six girls to an outside college so they chose the six best educated, which included Carolyn and I of course, and sent us to Kingsway College in Holborn. This was a far better experience than we would have had at 55 Broadway as we found out when we had to spend the Christmas holidays when the college was closed, there. It was a horrific experience, having to keep silent the whole time and to learn to type to dreadful music amongst other things. When we had finished the course we had to go to work in a LT typing pool originally in 55 Broadway which was pretty awful again working in silence etc. But somehow, Carolyn and I managed to get moved to LT's bus works - Aldenham Works in Elsree. Although there were only six of us plus the supervisor in the typing pool and a quite relaxed atmosphere, it had its drawbacks as we didn't really fit in with the background of the other staff. For a start, all the 'girls' were married to someone who worked 'on the buses' so we were very much outsiders. We had to stay with LT for two years, under a contract to compensate for our 'free training' so had to grin and bear it although free bus and underground travel was some compensation. After a few months, Carolyn succeeded in getting transferred to St Albans Bus Garage which made her journey to work easier as she lived in Brookmans Park. Then I was on my own for the last 15 months or so - I didn't have my companion to have a laugh with. I actually did a bit longer than I had to as I had decided to get married as soon as I could escape from LT so although I could have left in February, my wedding was to be in April so I stayed until then.
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