He had a penchant for pale purple shirts.  ‘Lilac’ maybe, or the longer-drawled, elderly ‘mauve’,…

The heartless, hand-rubbing man had, on my arrival in the four-times-as-wide-as-narrow room, told me to sit at a desk which overlooked the inner court of this soot-edged red brick octagonal building, my back to the double entrance doors and the right hand door by which he came and went far distant.   Handing me a list of letters to type he said “Put stamps only on the out-of-town addresses, the local ones will be delivered by…

I’d succeeded, poorly, with the shorthand typing but failed the OND in Business Studies because we so terrorised the brand new Economic Geography teacher that he took his revenge by failing the lot of us, (history does not record whether he failed in his career as a result).   I’d earned opprobrium by announcing my next step would be marriage – then I…