around. All the men present had lost an eye! He used to tell how once he cycled into the gates of the race course when in the distance he saw a giant sergeant drilling a new intake of men. But he knew all the sergeants and they were all of normal size. As he drew nearer he realised that this one was normal too – but was drilling a squad of dwarfs. They had called up all the dwarfs from the circuses.

If he could get his men through their test it meant an extra shilling a day to them, but many were illiterate including one black-jowled bruiser who had to admit to the name of Cupid Dart. In 1942 when we had just got back from leave we were posted back to London. Peter was to work in the War Office, so we could live at home.

My mother was now working from a flat in Cambridge. She had been head-hunted to take charge of Social Services for one eighth of England. So only my sister Helen, now working at the Admiralty, and my youngest brother David, waiting to join the Navy, were living at 44 Lee Park. It was very good to be home. There was a lull in the bombing and things almost seemed normal.

Peter worked in a department concerned with REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, earlier Royal Ordnance Corps) officers’ records. His superior there was an ardent philatelist. He had been escaping from Dunkirk when he came across a bombed French post-office – so he stopped to empty his haversack of all his kit and filled it with sheets and sheets of French stamps. When he got back to England he sold them and with the proceeds started to go to stamp auctions. By the time Peter met him he was spending most of his time on stamps – buying up old collections in his lunch hour, taking them home for his wife to soak off in the bath and iron them flat – after which he sold them through the stamp clubs. Already he had made enough money to put his small son through public school after the war, and then to university. He was now beginning to build up a fund with which to take his wife round the world! Peter was glad to cover for him when necessary.

Together they invented an officer for whom they opened a file. Periodically they posted him and ordered kit for him, on paper only of course. When the department was checked if they couldn’t quite match the officers’ files to the number required they could either add their invented officer or subtract him, so he proved very useful.

I had been getting more and more broody, but felt it unfair to put pressure on Peter. He had to want a child too. Now, by autumn 1942 he had come to terms with the fact that he was never going to be posted abroad – Hitler was not going to win the war, and he – Peter –