Misadventures Read Online Free Page B

realise she should not have done that.

1961
C AROL C
    Carol and I worked together in the same engineering company. We were both sixteen and employed as office juniors. We are still friends today.
    E arly in December Carol asked me, ‘What day is Christmas Day?’ I replied, ‘I don’t know.’ The following morning she told me, ‘Christmas Day is on the 25th of December.’ I replied, ‘I know that, but I thought you meant what day of the week.’ She didn’t believe me.
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    Carol and I shared our office with a girl called Jean. The three of us would go dancing on a Saturday night. Jean and I paid Carol’s expenses because she told us, ‘I can’t afford to go out.’ It was some weeks before she told Jean, ‘I’m saving up really hard because I’d like a car, my own flat and some nice clothes.’ Neither Jean nor I had any money in the bank so we stopped providing Carol with free entertainment.
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    Carol very kindly lived with me at my parents’ house whilst they were on holiday. After an evening out we returned to my home and found we had no milk. She said, ‘I’ll go to the machine in the main road and get a pint.’ Half an hour passed and I began to wonder if she’d had an accident. Eventually there was a knock on the street door. I opened it to see Carol holding the milk and a blond young man standing beside her. She told me his name was Mick and that they’d just met. They went out together for several weeks.
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    Carol told me one of her father’s funny stories. She said, ‘During the war my father was in the army and his unit was based in England. They had a fierce battle with the Germans flying overhead dropping bombs on them. One of our fellers took fright and jumped into a truck and drove away. My father said it was funny because the feller had jumped into the ammunition truck and hadn’t realised it.’
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    Carol decided to learn to drive a car. On the day of her test she left the office early. The following morning I asked her, ‘How did you get on yesterday?’ She replied, ‘I had the most terrible examiner and he failed me. As far as I’m concerned I should have passed. I answered all his questions correctly and I didn’t do anything wrong. I was just unlucky to have a test with a creep like him.’

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    A few weeks later Carol invited me to the home she shared with her parents, brother and sister. I discussed her driving test with her brother and I commented, ‘It was just hard luck she got a lousy examiner.’ He laughed and said, ‘The real reason why she failed was because she had a crash half way up Tottenham High Road. She was told to take the next left but she was in the overtaking lane and the car beside her wanted to go straight ahead. She should have let him go first but she didn’t. She crashed straight into him and made a dirty great hole in the door beside the examiner. Her instructor was livid when he saw the state of the car.’
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    Carol married at the age of nineteen and her son, Larry, was born in the first year of the marriage. He was three months old when Carol told me, ‘I thought I’d give Larry a bath in the baby bath. I put it on the kitchen table and I dipped him in it, then I covered him with soap. My hands were soapy too. I picked him up to give him a rinse and he slipped straight through my fingers and went crash on the floor!’
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    Each Christmas I would buy Carol some type of toiletry set. She told me her mother would say, ‘Well, you know what you’re going to get off Sylvie this year – another bar of soap.’

1963
U RSULA
    I was eighteen. Ursula was twenty-six. We both worked for the same chemical company in London’s West End as their printing department. I ran the Gestetner Department. Ursula was in charge of the Photocopy Department. We shared an office called