I took Molly the Dog for a 5 mile walk this morning and then returned her to Penny the Pal. As happens often, Penny made me a Nice Pot of Tea. During today's wide-ranging natterings I learned something pretty extraordinary about how Penny's parents first met.
Penny is a Bristolian by origin and then spent quite a bit of her early life in Camerton, curiously, less than a mile from where an aunt of mine lived, in Tunley, but that's irrelevant to this particular anecdote. Penny's dad was never called up for military service as, due to a motor cycle accident when he was 18, one of his legs was about 2" shorter than the other. He was an architect and he was attached to Bristol Airfield. This was not exactly a cushy number as Bristol was always being bombed and the airfield was no exception to this.
Air raid shelter spaces were generally allocated according to office and, to and extent, rank. Penny's dad was quite senior, and shared an office with similar types. One particular air raid, an acquaintance of his suggested that they swap places for that raid as said acquaintance wanted to do a bit of brown-nosing with senior staff. Penny's dad therefore made his way to another shelter, which was where he met Penny's mum, who was a telephonist. Their first conversation was about the fact that the last time he had tried to phone someone up, she had connected him to the dogs' home, and things burgeoned from there.
Meanwhile, the other shelter received a direct hit and everyone in it was killed.
