Betty's Secret Diary 3 March 1950

Saturday, 3 March 1950

Dear Diary,

This morning my regular ladies arrived at the salon for what we girls call the routine “curl up and dye” brigade. The salon was alive with the familiar lively chat and today’s topic was mostly about how to manage a family roast dinner on limited rations. I was rather pleased to learn one or two recipe tips for the best way to make ‘mock goose’ with lentils, apple, potatoes and sage. Of course there is always much speculation about when this cursed rationing will end. We’ve all had enough of making do and going without during the war, let alone since.

To be honest, the chatter of the salon has been the perfect way to distract my thoughts away from that disastrous cinema date with Jeremy. I was so very disappointed that he felt compelled to abandon me on the back row during ‘Brief Encounter’. I believe ostensibly that it was the very plot of the film that pricked his conscience. I wondered if Jeremy was struggling with an internal conflict about his own fidelity on that night? Surely, a dashing Squadron Leader of Jeremy’s calibre must be MARRIED?

This afternoon I found out the truth for certain, when the wretched newspaper boy delivered our Evening Standard on roller skates again. Apparently, the current trend from the States is to skate or cycle along the pavement and throw a rolled up newspaper like a V2 flying bomb through one’s front door. Nevertheless, the salon has its very own secret weapon against the paperboy’s missile, Doreen’s puppy Poochie promptly pounced upon the paper and tore it to shreds! I’m not certain if I was lucky to have salvaged an envelope from the wreckage, sometimes ignorance is bliss.  I discovered a telegram within the soggy torn paper, it read:

SORRY BETTY DARLING - SHIPPED OUT RAF POST IN FRANCE WITH WIFE - SWELL TIMES - THANK YOU XXX 

Astonishing!! Heart breaking!! Absurd!! Yet curiously satisfying that my hunch about the wife was spot on. Of course I was just a mere dalliance for Jeremy, something pretty to pass the time away whilst on leave! Oh but we did have such fun in the motorcar. Jeremy was always the perfect gentleman so nothing scandalous actually happened, apart from a Valentine’s dinner date that concluded with an early night alone. Ahh, but there was that moonlight kiss on Waterloo Bridge, hmmm…

Fiddlesticks! I sure do feel like the mock goose in this farce! Since the war we certainly do have a severe shortage of jolly decent chaps, mores the pity. There are just not enough of them to go around. Alas, romance is staying on rations these days.

BettyLicious