When I was 15, I worked on the machine, and I had a friend.  Milly was my friend, and Milly was gorgeous.  Greta Garbo legs, you know - she was 16, a year older than me, and I worked on the machine but she worked in the office, but we became really good friends.  But she’d full lips, large eyes, eyelashes, died her hair blonde – and all the things that I didn’t do.

And I was invited often to go to the house where the Nixons lived.  Now, there was two more sisters there, and the mother – where the father was, I don’t know, but he could have been working, in the forces or whatever, working away, because sometimes of course people did at that time, you had specialised jobs to go to.  

Anyway, I used to go and I used to love going.  I’ve always painted, and I painted a picture of a galleon.  And Milly said to me “When you come again, on Friday night, will you bring the picture of the galleon that you’ve painted, to show Vera?” – that was her sister.  There was a sister round about 19 and one at 21.  So I said “Yes, I will.”

Anyway, as I used to go there, this particular time my mother caught my arm, and she said to me “I don’t want you to go to Milly’s house anymore.”  So I said “Why not?”  So she said “Is there men there?”  So, I had a little think and I said “Well, there’s some American soldiers.”  So she said “I don’t want you going, Patricia.  I’ve told you – you do not go!”  

When it came to Friday, I told a lie, and I said I was going to my grandma’s and granddad’s.  So of course I came out, complete with a rolled-up band of this galleon.  So I get to Milly’s house, and when I get in there, the gramophone was going, and the records were going, and there were these soldiers there, about five of them.  And as I walked in, one of them said “Who’s the kid?”, meaning me, because as you can see I’m very small.  And so Mrs Nixon said “Oh it’s Milly’s friend” and he said “Oh right.”

So Milly turned to me - she said “Pat, have you brought the galleon with you?” and I said “I have” and I showed her it.  And Vera said “Oh, that is absolutely marvellous!  Can I buy it?”  So I says “Well, I don’t know.”  So she says “Oh go on, let me buy it!  I’ll give you half a crown.”  I said “Half a crown!” – and that were absolutely amazing.  “Oh yes,” she says, “and I’ll have it framed.”  

So one of the American soldiers put his hand in his pocket and he brought out a pile of change, and he said “Here, take it.”  So I took that, put the half a crown in my hand, and I said “Thank you.”

So when I got home, my mother said to me “I know what you’ve done, you have not gone to your grandma’s and granddad’s - you’ve gone to Milly’s.”  So I said “I have.”  She said “Who was there?”  I said “About five American soldiers.”  She says “What did they do?”  I said “Well, nothing really.  We played music and we all got up and did” – you know, very popular at that time was Hawaiian dance music - so I said “We got up and we all did Hawaiian music.”  

But I said “Look what I’ve got” – and I opened my hand and I showed her the half a crown.  And my mother said “Who gave you that?” and I said “An American soldier.”  And she said, going red “Oh my god!” and grabbed my shoulders, “What have you done for that half a crown?”  And I was really in tears, and I said “I’ve done nothing mum, truly I’ve done nothing.  I’ve only painted a picture of a galleon, and they gave me half a crown!”