| Description | Interview with Isabel Sandison from Buckie, who took MA Honours in French and German, in 1943, recorded 15 October 2003 and the interviewer is Jennifer Carter.
Transcription:
JC So thank you very much for welcoming me to your home and may I start asking you how it came about that you came to university. I know that you were brought up in Buckie where your father ran a business. Was it kind of automatic that you would come to university or was there some special turning point in your life that made you do so.
IS No, there was no special turning point. I was a first generation university student, obviously, and had done well at school, you know, was always in the top class and so on and liked studying, I suppose I enjoyed it. I don't know, it seemed to be automatic. My parents were more than pleased to let me come.
JC Were your parents pushing you or was it your teachers' maybe?
IS Oh no, not my parents. They were proud to think that I got there.
JC But they left the initiative to the teachers?
IS Oh, definitely, definitely. I was good at, not good at all subjects, but I was particularly good at French and German. I wanted to do something with that.
JC Did you sit the Bursary Competition?
IS I did. I got a bursary for £25 a year.
JC Marvellous!
IS Yes, yes. I kept a little diary when I first went to up to university, for the first term. I it conked out in October, I don't know why.
JC You got too busy, I expect.
IS Yes and on one occasion I collected my bursary and went and cashed it and then drew another £5 in order to pay my fees.
JC So your bursary was £25 and the fees were £30.
IS They must have been something like that.
JC Did Carnegie pay the fees.
IS No. I think you could apply for a Carnegie and you got around £9 from Carnegie if you wanted it. I have a feeling that somebody urged me to do that.
JC But you didn't actually do it?
IS I think I probably did! And why Aberdeen, well in those days it was just the thing to do.
JC You never even thought of anywhere else?
IS No, unless you had an aunty in Glasgow who would take you in. Most people just went to Aberdeen. It was the university as far as we were concerned. A much smaller place than now of course.
JC Oh, indeed. About 1,000 students I suppose.
IS Something like that I suppose.
JC And did you go up with a cohort of friends from school or were you a singleton?
IS No. I had a friend who went up to do medicine. We had been friends through school together and we went up and shared digs with her older sister, who was also in medicine, and her friend. So 4 of us got into the same digs in Rosemount Place.
JC And you were all Buckie lasses.
IS We were all Buckie lasses and that was good.
JC So I was going to ask next where you lived. So you have told me you got digs through a sort of network connection. Did your stay in those digs all of your time or did you move on to other places?
IS No, we didn't. We were there for .. there were other people in the digs, apart from students, which meant that it wasn't a very studious atmosphere at times. But most of my classes were at King's which was far from Rosemount, whereas the girls, the other two went to medical school. So I moved out of there after two years and chummed up with another girl and we went to somewhere in King Street. A house which was eventually commandeered by the army or something! We had to get out of that. I have had an adventurous digs story. Then we went to a place, Cedar Place in Aberdeen, a nice little bungalow, very perjinct landlady. A very, very cold winter, we walked through snow every night to get to our digs and our tea, I can still see it, on a transparent Pyrex place with three sardines on it, that was our tea, with half a softie!
JC Every day?
IS No. that was one I remember in particular!
JC Most notable. That is mean, isn't it?
IS Yes, so we didn't stay there very long. Anyway she asked us to leave because her husband was in the forces and he was coming home on leave and he didn't know that she was taking in boarders. So after that the other girl went to Training College and I went to digs in Bedford Road, out of which I was bombed in 1943. The house next door was hit. And to continue my story, my friend, who was in digs with Isobel Middleton's mother, now you have already spoken to Isobel, she took me in for the last few days before Finals!
JC So it was literally just before finals the bomb fell on you.
IS Well it was April and the Finals were in May and June or something.
JC These various changes of digs you described, and certainly you had a more hairy time than many people, did you find the digs always through friends or was there some kind of University network.
IS There was no network that I remember. It must just have been by word of mouth I think, or perhaps adverts in the paper. I just don't remember. I know that we got the first ones, Helen, the other girl's mother took us into Aberdeen and we went to various houses. I think she must have had a list from somewhere and we settled on this one. But they were always a problem, digs.
JC And roughly what did they cost, do you remember?
IS Oh I think it was something like one guinea a week or something.
JC Were you a Monday to Friday person, who came home for weekends?
IS Not always. I came home occasionally, but not every weekend.
JC What was travel between Aberdeen and Buckie like in wartime?
IS Well in those days there was the train of course.
JC What to Buckie?
IS Yes.
JC I didn't realise that.
IS Oh yes. Dr. Beeching did away with that one. You met all your pals on that train, you know, because you picked them up at Huntly and various place enroute and you went off on the first train in the morning, which was a quarter to seven or something. The trains I seem to remember, just going out and in on the train.
JC You couldn't have commuted to University, though, I mean you couldn't have gone by the day. It was too long a journey or too expensive.
IS Oh no : both I suppose. Too long and too time consuming. As even the train would take the best part of 2 hours.
JC Yes that would have been 4 hours travelling a day, as well as getting to and from the station.
IS No, it was a bit unsettling doing that too.
JC Oh, I was just wondering if it was feasible and whether anyone would do that.
IS I don't know anyone who did.
JC Okay so that has given us a little window into your life time experience in Aberdeen as it were, coming back to the academic side, you were telling me that you were quite clear what you wanted to do. It was going to be languages.
IS Yes. It was going to be languages.
JC Did you get any official advice. Did you have an advisor or a regent or anyone as it were who told you at the beginning what was necessary, or did you have to find that out yourself.
IS Well before we went up I think it was the headmaster of the school who gave us some advice as to what subjects I should take with my languages and I took History, European History in my first year and for some strange reason Psychology with Rex Knight. I don't know if Rex Knight has come into your …
JC Oh everybody has mentioned him, as the sort of charismatic, wonderful lecturer.
IS Oh yes, I think that was it. Very good.
JC But his wife, I gather, was not so popular, Margaret Knight!
IS Well she did a lot of the work too.
JC But she didn't have the same sparkle as Rex.
IS Well we were young girls, he was a man…..
JC So you did three subjects in first year.
IS Yes , French, German and History.
JC And in second year you did?
IS French, German and Psychology. After that it was just French and German of course for two years.
JC And you did the full four years for an Honours Degree, but you didn't of course do your period of time abroad because of the war.
IS Not until after the war. We were allowed to do that, obviously.
JC Would you have had to do a year abroad if you had not wanted to teach? Or could you have had your Honours degree without the year abroad.
IS No. I think that is part of the Honours Degree.
JC So it was a kind of commitment that you had at some point to do.
IS Yes, we went up to University in 1939 as I say and there were already, the year ahead of us was already doing their year abroad at that point and they came back when we were in, September or October, full of stories of how they had got out of Germany and this kind of thing. So we just missed out in that one.
JC So they had completed their year and come back in September. Gosh that must have been an interest talking to them about their adventures. Which of your teachers apart from Rex Knight do you particularly remember?.
IS Well Rex Knight was just a passing phase! He was just one year!
JC He didn't make you want to do Psychology
IS No, no. It was more of an entertainment than anything else. No - I remember in particular the German Department, because it was a small department. We had Dr. Witte, he was a darling. He was absolutely bi-lingual, but he came from Poland, or the Polish border.
JC Yes, Polish-German.
IS He had beautiful English. He had much better English than any of the others and Dr. Yates, who was a rather sick man at the time.
JC He was getting towards the end of his career, wasn't he?
IS Yes. He had a very dry sense of humour. "Never delay a dictionary reference Miss Sandison"! I remember little phrases from him. But they were both excellent communicators and they got to know us as we were such a small group.
JC When you say such a small group, how many of you were there?
IS Well eventually we finished up with just six or seven doing German. But of course in first and second year there were more. There would have been more ….
JC Some of them would have been called-up were they?
IS Yes, or people just took it for two years, or one year. There would have been about 20, I suppose at the most, in our class, whereas the French class was big and we had Prof. Rowe then.
JC Freddy Rowe.
IS Yes, who loved acting and his specialist subject was Romantic Drama! So he would be up on the desk with his cloak being the villain.
JC He was a bit of a show-man too.
IS Yes.
JC Who else would there have been in French then?
IS The other French lecturer was a Dr. Lough. Now his wife taught too or lectured too.
JC Now I think he ended up in Durham.
IS He went south somewhere. And the other German one was Kenneth Brooke
JC I don't know anything about him.
IS No. I think he finished up marrying one of the students.
JC Was that Brook or Brooke?
IS I think there was an "e" on the end. He was the young one and sort of joky.
JC What about native speakers, did you have any French or German native speakers to help you, considering it was war-time?
IS Yes, well no German ones. Dr. Witte of course was a native German speaker himself, but there was a French girl and a French, older man at one time, I can't remember their names now.
JC Were they refuges from France or how did they end up here as it were?
IS I don't know, but eventually, because of the situation in France, St. Andrews University ran courses in the Summer where all the free French people in the country came and we had immersion French for a month or something with them.
JC During the vacation?
IS Yes. You know at meals and everywhere else. They gathered round then but I don't know whether they had been trapped in Britain or not the ones we had but I don't remember.
JC But you didn't have the equivalent Summer School for German?
IS No. Just French. There wouldn't be many Germans hanging around, free to come !
JC They would have all be interred, yes! And your …. I have lost the thread there… I was think about… oh yes, your first year History. Do you remember who was teaching that then? Would it have been J.B. Black?
IS It was. Prof. Black. And his assistant now was a lady who wrote books.
JC Catherine Gavin?
IS That's right!
JC Who became quite a well know novelist.
IS Absolutely, yes.
JC I hear that she was rather a stern teacher.
IS Oh yes! I don't remember her lecturing much, it was a period of history I tend to forget anyway.
JC Probably the Prof. did the lecturing and she just did the tutorial side of things.
IS Yes. She appeared fairly regularly but she was a force to be reckoned with I think!
JC A formidable young woman.
IS I think she returned an essay to me once and said "You forgot to mention …" Oh I have forgot what it was now. It was a word that I had vaguely heard of myself, meaning that I hadn't, I had just concentrated on that facts and not thought of the philosophical ideas behind at all. Something like that!
JC You only had to put up with that for one year.
IS Yes. We had French and German clubs of course, which met once a week.
JC As often as that?
IS Yes. We met in the .. just opposite Marischal, there..
JC The Students' Union?
IS The Student's Union, that's right.
JC And you used those for what? For talking about part of the syllabus?
IS Well there was a syllabus, you know, maybe somebody came and talked and you had your tea and your coffee and so on. A social thing, a social occasion and there was always a do at the end of the .. At Christmas time we had a Wein Nacht Fair in German, and singing and things. You wouldn't have thought there was a war on. It didn't impact, impinge on us at that point.
JC Until the bombs fell on you later.
IS In 1939 it was quite quiet.
JC Yes we should talk about that separately, but just wrapping up on the academic side, when you actually graduated it was war-time, 1943. Was there a ceremony or was it all very informal because of the war-time?
IS Oh no we had a proper graduation.
JC In the Mitchell Hall?
IS Yes, with our hats on.
JC Very good. I wondered, because the Medics who graduated around your time told me that they just graduated in the Elphinstone Hall, quite informally with no gowns or anything.
IS Oh no, We have pictures to prove we were at Marischal!
JC Well I am glad that you had a full blown ceremony! So you were telling me about the French and German Clubs. What other social activities did you get involved in as a student?
IS Well I didn't, because I wasn't a very social being at all I am afraid, there were the hops of course, dances and things.
JC This would be what, a Saturday night at the Union and that sort of thing?
IS I think so and the thing was that there was a black-out in Aberdeen of course, going out. The strange thing was that we didn't feel terrible worried about being out in the dark. You would now.
JC You would now wouldn't you.
IS But everybody had luminous discs we stuck, all you could see was luminous discs coming through.
JC That must have been odd!
IS Yes.
JC But of course very little traffic I presume because of the black-out?
IS Yes that is true and the car lights and the buses, .. trams it was mostly rather than buses, their lights were shades.
JC Did the street lights work or were they turned off for black-out?
IS I really can't remember. They couldn't have been shining upwards because that was what they didn't want. It was very dim lights and that sort of restricted your social activities.
JC You said a moment ago that you wouldn't have known there was a war on. I mean was there much interest taken in the war by students or did you feel yourself kind of separate from the events of the world?
IS There wasn't much except that every now and again there would be a parade down Union Street, you know, to drum up interest, either the Land Army or, I don't know. Guns or something. I forgot what they used to be called. They had a name.
JC But as a student you didn't feel kind of well involved in the politics of the war for instance.
IS No. A lot of the boys of course were in the Cadet Force. They did that.
JC Did you do any war work? Were you encouraged to do anything? Or did you have to do anything?
IS We helped for a wee while in a canteen somewhere on Union Street, I seem to remember, but it was very brief. We all had to do a first aid course.
JC Fire-watching?
IS Oh Fire-watching, my goodness yes. Fire-watching!
JC Did you have to do that or did you do it for the money?
IS Oh there was no money attached.
JC Oh there was no money, or I thought you were paid for your rations or something.
IS Oh, I don't know, I don't remember that, but we fire-watched at Marischal College, a group of us.
JC Whereabouts were you? Not up the tower I hope!
IS No, we were down, down and 2 of the group were medical students.
JC So you were near the "drain"?
IS Well they took us down, a tour of the "drain" one night. Would never let them do it again!
JC Tried to scare your wits out of you I have no doubt!
IS Yes, there was a little room somewhere where we sat. Now I can't remember how long we would have stayed there. We didn't stay all night.
JC Fire-watching. That was compulsory was it, or was it just sort of very strongly encouraged.
IS Well I just don't remember why we did it. I don't think we ever did it at King's. Maybe it was required of us but I don't remember.
JC Tell me a bit more, you said just now very forcibly that you didn't get paid for that, how did you manage financially. Did you have to do any work outside the University work in order to earn money, or did your parents support you?
IS Well my parent just …. They opened an account for me at one of the banks. I know that my father, I know that when I was born he started some savings thing for me. So I expect it was that. In fact my brother, whose is nine years younger than I, went on to university too, and we often wonder how they managed to afford to put us there.
JC But you didn't feel constrained financially? Or did you? I mean a lot of people of your generation speak about what a struggle it was financially.
IS Well I didn't. Our needs seemed to be so little. What we did do a lot of was go to the cinema, in the afternoons.
JC When it was cheap and warm!
IS Well we had obviously done enough work for the day. We didn't seem to take our studies too seriously sometimes. Although the library at King's was good and I spent quite a lot of time in the library at King's.
JC That was a good working environment was it?
IS Yes it was. Alas, no more, I gather.
JC Yes, well let's not speak about that! Don't get me on that topic! Was it cold working there. Was that a problem that you were always cold?
IS Well I think the idea was that if you studied in your digs you felt you were using up the landladies fire and that sort of thing. And it would be warmer in the library, I would think, and cheerier too probably. I have one marvellous recollection of… because of the black-out, there were evening services at King's College. There was a moonlight service one night, it was a beautiful big moon, frosty night, and they had a service in King's Chapel , no lights. I think they had candles inside, but it left an impression on me, it was beautiful.
JC That was a sort of one off, not the regular.
IS I think so, yes.
JC Were you a Chapel girl? Did you go to King's regularly?
IS Well I went fairly regularly, yes.
JC And there was a university Chaplain in those days or did that come later. It may have come after the war.
IS I don't remember a Chaplain, no.
JC So who conducted the services. The local ministers, or Divinity students or Divinity Professors perhaps?
IS It is a difficult one. There must have been… Would there have been a minister just?
I don't know. He might have been the Chaplain.
JC I can't remember how far the University Chaplain goes back. It is not all that far. It may have been after the war.
IS Possibly. There was never anyone… you know, you were never told that there was a Chaplain there if you wanted to consult him, I don't think.
JC Was there any kind of back up of that sort, what we now call a welfare network? I asked earlier if you had a Regent and it didn't sound as if you had.
IS No, we had what we were told when we arrived there, we had a Director of Studies, and that was Dr. Yates and that was in our own department.
JC Yes, I see. So you didn't have any other sort of welfare backup. Adviser to Women Students, perhaps she came later too. Or maybe you weren't aware of her.
IS Well I certainly wasn't aware of her no, sorry. She may have come later. War-time was maybe a difficult time to bring these things in.
JC Thinking of war-time, how much did it colour your life. It is a difficult question to ask, but as you were growing up, you were growing up in the period leading to the outbreak of war and then you did your student days in war-time. I mean was this a sort of big issue in your life or was it just something that was happening a long, way away?
IS Well it was happening a long, way away, except I remember the day… I can't remember the date now when Italy came into the war and we were all discussing you know there would be lines of German and Italian soldiers coming down Union Street and what would we do! There was a fear there that something would happen and the war wasn't going too well and we had no idea what would happen to us.
JC Were you automatically patriotic or …
IS Oh I think so. Yes.
JC So there was no questioning of the war or the need for it or what we were doing fighting Hitler?
IS Well I don't know. As I say I have this little diary which I kept just before I went up to University and I spent the week or so before going up making black-out curtains for everything and then the policeman came to the door and there was a chink of light and to go and make another curtain. Then we had all sorts of practices of course. The other thing about my digs, the ones I was bombed out of, in April. The siren had sounded often and there had been bombs in Aberdeen but no where near us and then this raid was obviously getting near and every house had, I think, been supplied with a big table like this, but made of metal….
JC So you could get underneath?
IS Now, it wasn't an Anderson Shelter, it was a Morrison Shelter. It was a great big thing like that in the sitting room which I had but didn't think of going under there when the bombs were getting near. My landlady, her daughter and the dog and myself all went into a little cupboard under the stairs and when the raid was over and we came out and you know that table, the wall beside it was pitted with glass because the window had come in.
JC So you would have been shattered with glass.
IS So we were absolutely safe in that little cupboard under the stairs. That was in Bedford Road.
JC That must have given you a thought!
IS Yes, well that was war as we knew it.
JC Were you at all a political animal as a child or as a student?
IS Absolutely not! I went to the Debating Society once or something, but, just as spectator, but it didn't appeal.
JC And I suppose the other odd thing about a war-time student was the gradual disappearance of the men.
IS Yes, very few left. There was only those who were with medically unfit or objectors, I suppose.
JC Were there any men doing French and German with you, or was it an entirely woman's class?
IS Well we finished up with one man, John Wilkie, who wasn't very strong. He went eventually and became a professor at somewhere in the midlands.
JC Yes, either Leeds or Sheffield.
IS I forget which. He was one of these who had a natural instinct for being right all the time! No I mean that he.. we would be studying things and coming out of the exam and he would say "Oh yes I thought that would come up".
JC He sounds like a horrible little prig!
IS Well he was very clever, there was not doubt about it.
JC So as you were drawing towards the end of your degree which was 1943 what were your thoughts about what you would do next. You told me you didn't originally think of teaching.
IS I didn't particularly want to teach, I didn't. It was war-time and it was obvious if you didn't teach you would be called up to do something.
JC So how did that work out for you?
IS Well I was all prepared to go into the WRENS. I liked the uniform!
JC Oh nice uniform, social life, yes!
IS I was all prepared to go. But the strange thing was that when I got to Bletchley, it was WRENS I was working with, it was a mixture of civilians and service people.
JC So how were you recruited for Bletchley?
IS Well I think a notice must have come round the University - if you were interested.. and two of us from our group went up to Queen's Road somewhere where we were met by a lady, I should know her name, but it will come back in a minute, she was well known as a recruiter for Bletchley Park and an interview of course, and then we sat a test in German, a written test and it was all about aeroplanes or something like that. Now I had a younger brother who was mad on aeroplanes so I knew all the parts of an aeroplane!
JC It wouldn't normally come in the German syllabus.
IS It was the kind of thing you could make up you know, you could say that must mean so and so. I maintain that is why I got in, because the other girl didn't, but she turned up at Bletchley in the ATS.
JC So your language skills got you in?
IS Yes, well she had got into it in another way. She had joined up or been called up.
JC So you were a civilian at Bletchley then were you?
IS I was a civilian.
JC Were you reasonably well paid?
IS Oh it was a thrill, the first wage I had ever got.
JC How much was it?
IS I think it was something like £250 a year you got.
JC Which in those days was quite a decent salary and you were technically a civil servant were you?
IS Yes, a temporary civil servant or something. I forget the title now.
JC And did you find it interesting work or was it pretty well …
IS Well I was scared stiff to begin with because I went down there on my own, set off on the train down to London.
JC Had you ever been south before or was that you first journey?
IS I had never been as far south, no. But you know I had lots of instructions and we were met at Bletchley and so on and we were billeted there with no choice. Again billets were sometimes difficult because billitors didn't always want people, they were forced to take them. But it worked okay.
JC You got a decent billet did you?
IS Yes, eventually I finished up with another friend, who I still have, and we shared a .. well we did for ourselves so to speak, in a house, self-catering in Bedford.
JC And that lasted how long, the Bletchley period?
IS Not very long. I went down in 1943 and came back at the beginning of 1946.
JC So three years.
IS Then I did my teacher training 1946 to 1947. The thing was that we got off with two terms instead of three. We were known as "delutees".
JC "Delutees" what an extraordinary term!
IS Not an evacuee but a "delutee"!
JC Sounds like a very weak drink!
IS It does, doesn't it!
JC So at Bletchley, I think you told me you had to learn Japanese, is that right?
IS Yes, they were getting people who had done languages, either graduated with languages or some of the younger people who were just coming from 6th form college in England where they had done Latin and Greek, a lot of them, Classics, any language at all as long as you showed the ability you could learn a different language well enough. There was a group of about 16 of us or so and our tutor had been the Vice-Consul in Tokyo before he came over, Hugh Lloyd, and we spent 6 months doing that morning, afternoon..
JC Hard going isn't it because Japanese is not an easy language.
IS No. and I still remember the feeling after about a month I thought " I am never going to master this" I had the feeling that the surface of the water was up there and I was down here and then I still remember the feeling one day when I could see over the top and it fell into place after that. The characters you know were difficult.
JC And have you retained it as a matter of interest?
IS Not really, no. We didn't really .. the vocabulary we used was very technical. Mine was all naval, about ships and one phrase I seem to remember was when the Japanese was "We shall have to devise a counter measure" "Ti sako ka suro yumiuri" (???????????????????)
JC So you have retained that at least.
IS That's all. I can't even say please and thank you and can I have a drink of tea!
JC Did you ever travel to Japan?
IS No. I have no desire to.
JC I just wondered. So what was the nature you were doing, first with German and then with Japanese. Were you translating documents or listening to the radio?
IS I was never doing anything in German of course because I was put straight into the Japanese section, after just a bit of filing and office work. No we were.. the messages were being intercepted elsewhere of course and converted into Roman letters. So we were presented with these messages and we had to translate them into English and inform the relevant people of what the message contained……
JC So this is side two of the tape and you were just telling me about your working with Japanese at Bletchley Park and what you were doing basically was sort of first grade interpretation I suppose, intelligence interpretation.
IS Yes, but before the messages got to us they had already been redirected. We were concentrating on messages concerning code books. Where they were being held, when they were changing, who held them, this sort of thing, and any reference to code books we were given the message. There was a shopping list, you know, so and so needed to be informed.
JC Did you sort of get any overall feel of the pattern of the thing or was it simply you did your little bit and that was it?
IS It was the same for most people in Bletchley, we just did our little bit. That's all we were encouraged to do. We were not encouraged to talk about it to anybody else. Mind you what I was doing was not all that secret, but the German people were very much involved in keeping things quiet I think.
JC How much more did you become, as it were, interested in the progress of the war, now you were part of the war effort? I mean for example when the Atom bomb was detonated was that something that struck you as an important moment?
IS Yes, I suppose it did, yes.
JC Or does one take that in ones stride?
IS Well I don't think you can take it in your stride, but …
JC I did as a child, I was a bit younger than you, but I wondered how that struck you as an adult person who was involved in the war effort.
IS Did you? No, it just seemed such a drastic way to do it.
JC So you left Bletchley and then went into teaching for the rest of the period.
IS Yes, I came home and then did my teacher training course, which was good.
JC Was that in Aberdeen?
IS Yes, it was good because most of us were ex-service people or ex-war people and my happy memory is of .. because the men in the group were having to do a chapter 3, you know, Primary school as well as their chapter 5, then a few girls did the same and I have a lovely memory of taking a gym class with the big ex-captains and majors, and saying "now join hands and make a circle". And one of the lecturers, now I forget her name, she was either "Logic Annie" or .. she did Logic and Moral Philosophy…."Ethica Jessica"! She said "How lovely to have some mature students for a change", you know, in her particular subject I suppose it would make a difference. So the men didn't take it all that serious, all that training. Which was good.
JC And having done your training you then did your year abroad?
IS Yes, I got a job first, then did my year abroad.
JC Which was in a French school or what?
IS In a French college, Ecole Normale, a training college for teachers.
JC Oh that is a very high level stuff.
IS Yes, so they were all girls who were, some of them in fact engaged, they were aged about 17 to 19 years maybe, but …
JC Where about in France was that?
IS In Rennes, Brittany. It was nice.
JC And did you enjoy the year?
IS I enjoyed it very much. I made friends with the two institutrices, they were called, the two sort of supervisors ones, the ones who were students themselves but had a job looking after the youngsters.
JC And have you remained a Francophile all your life?
IS Oh yes, I love France.
JC And you go for holidays and visits?
IS I have been, but I don't think I will be going back now, but still.
JC And to Germany at all or not. You didn't have the same affinity with Germany.
IS No, I did two courses in .. since I couldn't do residence, well at least, I didn't do residence, I did a month in Austria in Salzburg, which is lovely, at the University, and I think 3 weeks in Bonn, at the University there. I enjoyed it all. It was great.
JC Great. Well this has been extremely interesting and nice of you to tell of these distant days. Is there any area of your university life which we haven't covered and you think I ought to have done? Or ought to have asked you about?
IS I don't think so. For a very brief spell I played in the University Orchestra!
JC Did you indeed!
IS I laugh when I think of it!
JC What instrument did you play?
IS The viola. I had a music teacher and learned piano here and the music teacher got up a little group "now we will teach you some fiddle music" and I went to school orchestra along here, and the conductor said "you have fine long arms, I will give you a viola"! So he gave me a few lessons on the viola and then as it so happened, it was my last year at school, when I got up to University this Brooke, Kenneth Brooke, knew my music teacher and he said "I believe you play the viola", I said "Not really" "Oh you must come along". Anyway I got my viola taken in for me and it didn't last long because there were only two viola players, myself and a 5th year medical. Now I was a shy little 1st year Arts and this was a 5th year Medical and he was very nice to me and very kind, but one day he wasn't there and I was left to the viola solo..
JC You ran!
IS I realised there was no future in it for me. Tried anything but that was unsuccessful. No, a lot of the time we spent working of course, studying. Because I felt that I wasn't that brilliant that I could do without that.
JC Did you have good friends by the sound of it. And you enjoyed your time at university?
IS I think I did and it would probably have been better without the war, but that's a detail.
JC In what way would it have been better do you think?
IS Well you would have been freer to come and go and things like that.
JC You could have travelled and done your year abroad at the proper time and things like that.
IS Yes, yes. No the cinema was about the most exciting thing that happened!
JC Do you remember any of the films. What did you see in those days?
IS I saw the Man in Black. No I remember the Man in Black because you had to queue to get into the cinema in the afternoon and we were kind of last in the queue and when we got in we were sitting in the very front seat. Now the screen was up there and we were down here and the Man in Black was about 9 feet tall! And 2 inches wide.
JC Were you terrified were you or did you just laugh!
IS I never thought the same about that film again. I have been playing with this mike I am sorry…
JC It is okay, I have listened once or twice and it's fine. Well if there is nothing else that you want to cover shall we call it a day, or have you thought of anything else?
IS No not really, I have bared my sole to you!
JC Well thank you, I am privileged. Thank you very much and let's sign off then.
IS Thank you.
End of Interview.
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