FIRST JOB

When I turned up on the doorstep of this building in September 1971 for my first day of work it was the one-and-only branch of Hammicks Bookshop, later with branches all over the country but then about two years old as a business, and I was to be the owner's PA (or ADC as he called it, having set up the bookshop after a career as a Guards Officer). My office was behind the top floor window above the door, and I was mainly useless, the boss was terrifying and most of the staff were very eccentric, but we had a lot of fun! The first floor was the children's section whose manager had started on the same day as me - a lovely lady whose friendship introduced me to so many other friends and stories. There used to be such odd goings-on in the buildings in that street, which caused a few giggles and the odd raised eyebrow then, but these days would probably have made tabloid headlines full of sound and fury. And on the serious side, I was sitting in my office one day when the building quivered and the windows rattled like nothing I'd ever felt from passing traffic, and after a few minutes silence the air was full of sirens and all the vehicles from the police station round the corner shot past the building because there had been one of the first IRA bombs three miles away in Aldershot .

I'm sitting here remembering more and more. I must be getting old, but then it is my second-youngest sister's 60th birthday today! How did that happen?!