no. 52

Name: Elsie Humphrey

Age: unknown

Entry: December 2003, Tunbridge Wells

I was in America during the last part of the war, it was the best thing I did in my twenties. I was working for the GI’s, what a varied and exciting social life I had.

I bought my first evening gown made from black taffeta-to attend a ball. On another occasion I went to the opening night of a Russian restaurant, I drank vodka and danced on tables. I bought a wedding dress before I went home, I had planned to marry a man who was a great friend of mine at home. In America they wrapped up the dress beautifully, the placed it in a gold embossed box with my name on it, they stuffed it full of tissue paper, when my sister saw it she got a fright of her life, she thought at first glance that there was a body in the box!

When I returned home I realised I couldn’t marry the man I intended before I left for America, and so I called it off.

I met my future husband a year later, he was the son of a jewellery shop owner, and I married him in that wedding dress. (I didn’t tell him I had originally bought it when I intended to marry another)