When I met Pam her mother was a teacher at Reddiford School; a small private school in Pinner. With typical prickly pride and stubborn honesty she disliked donning an academic gown to impress the parents at Open Days. There is a hymn in which we ask God to forgive our Proud Hearts and Stubborn Wills. I do not think God will find them difficult to forgive. Pamela's mother never had a washing machine. All the washing was done by hand with a clean shirt every day for her husband. My mother had a washing machine in the thirties. A Canadian built, faded green Beatty. A tub containing big slowly revolving paddles with a wringer mounted above. I am not sure if the wringer was manually or electically powered. One filled it with hot water by bucket or a hose from the hot tap. Pam's mother sometimes used to cycle to my mother's house in Royston Park Road;. a big seven bed-roomed house. She thought the bicycle might embarrass my mother: a quite erroneous idea. My mother was born in Bethnal Green. Still, in the sixties, remembered as slums. She and her sisters disguised it as BG.