Good evening and welcome listeners.  Thank you so much for dropping by to listen to my very first attempt at pod casting.  I am sure I have still a lot to learn about the process but that is half the fun, isn’t it?  At my age, which places me amongst the dinosaurs, time is running out so I think I best learn quickly.

I hope that I can find some amusing and maybe not so amusing antidotes to entertain you. My pod casts will be recalling events in my life, which span over half a century, and which I think you may like to hear about.  I won’t be telling you about how I climbed Mount Everest or survived the swamplands in South America, not that I ever did mind you, but nonetheless, in mediocre fashion, I shall do my best to make my talks interesting.

I was born and raised in Glasgow which is situated on the west coast of Scotland.  A city renowned for its ship building yards on the River Clyde and of course, everyone who lived in that area knew exactly where the Singer Sewing Machine factory was.  It was a large, red brick building which seemed so out of place towering over the grey stoned tenement blocks.  If you stuck an Indian tepee in the middle of Trafalgar Square, that is how out of place it looked. On the whole, most men folk worked in the shipyards and their womenfolk found employment within Singers.

My memories of Glasgow are of grey clouds hanging over grey, dirty tenement buildings with scruffy children, including myself, playing in scruffy streets.  Ofcourse that was post-war Glasgow which still bore the scars of  Luftwaffe bombings from World War 2.  It was bad enough that people were living in sub-standard accommodation but now they were surrounded by bombed out sites, literally on their own doorstep.  I re-visited Glasgow several years ago and was pleasantly surprised, if not astonished, to find it a rejuvenated and vibrant city filled with happy faces, not the down trodden ones, trapped in near poverty conditions, that I remember as a child. 

Glasgow’s young men who enlisted or were called up into the Armed Services during the 1950’s usually ended up in the Army or the Navy.  I can never remember seeing an airman dressed in RAF uniform myself, so it was quite a surprise to me when my best friend told me that she was writing to a penpal, a chap in the RAF who was serving overseas.  I  can’t remember exactly how she came to find this penpal.  It must have been out of one of those girlie magazines she was always buying.  You know the sort of thing - love stories which always had a happy ending, how to walk like a model, how to style your hair so you looked like Rita Hayworth, how in invisibly darn your denier stockings etc etc.

Well, it eventually came about that my friend’s penpal was coming home to the UK on leave and wanted to meet up with her.  He was bringing back with him his RAF buddy who just so happened to lived in Clydebank.  Luckily for him, his mate’s parents would put him up for a few days so he would have ample opportunity to get to know my friend.

I was pleased for her because she had had a run of bad luck with boyfriends up until then. The last boyfriend had taken off like a jack rabbit - either through embarrassment or scared out of his wits.  Jiving for all her worth down at the local Locarno Ballroom one Saturday night, her pumped up bra deflated on one breast whilst the other remained something similar to that I have seen worn by Madonna - you know, that infamous costume she wore with pointed breasts.  Anyway, you must remember those bras…….there was a little tube you pulled out and blew up to make any cup size you desired.  Oh! She was into all sorts of things like that my friend - I put it down to reading too many of those girlie books myself.

When arrangements had been made to meet up with her penpal come boyfriend, he asked if he could bring his friend along and could she fix him up with a date.  That blind date turned out to be me.  I had a steady boyfriend at the time but thought going out on one blind date, just to help a friend out, was not a problem.  No hanky panky or anything like that you understand - just a trip to the cinema as a foursome, fish and chips later and then home………no problem. 

How wrong I was………little did I know at the time but I was on the point of meeting my future husband. 

Mum was so impressed when I told her I had been out with an Aircraftsman from the Royal Air Force.  “He’s not only an Aircraftsman, Mum, but he’s a Senior one too.  In my own naïve way, I had visions of him running a Squadron of aircraft or maybe on first name terms with his Station Commander.  It was a bit of a come down to learn that a Senior Aircraftsman was the 3^rd lowest rank in the RAF but that didn’t change my feelings for him………I was in love, truly, madly in love: definitely .  

I never saw my regular boyfriend again and never pined for him either. It was a bit cruel of me I know but my whole being was totally absorbed with this prince who had just entered into my life.  I could think of no one but him. Although I was only 19 at the time I had felt trapped somehow in my relationship with my now former boyfriend.  Life seemed to be already mapped out for me.  I was following the same footsteps as most young women in the city seemed to journey towards.  We would marry, live in a degraded tenement block, have children and then no doubt, he would spend the remainder of his life with his mates down at the pub and going to rowdy football matches at weekends. I had no great ambitions in those days but for sure, I knew this was not the road I wanted destiny to take me.

As for my friend.  Well she didn’t fair too well in life after I married my prince, infact all the time I knew her, her life was pretty grim. With more love and a sense of belonging in her life, I’m sure my friend would have faired better.  But then that’s another story which I will get round to telling you someday.

I hope you will join me again.  Thank you for listening