IT IS 1971 and a secretary, who is nearer thirty than she wants to be, decides to return to the WRAF, to which she had said goodbye back in 1963. As this sequel to Naafi, Knickers & Nijmegen begins she reflects on her activities during the past decade and agonises over what to do next.
What will it be like to go back a second time and, perhaps, come across familiar faces, both welcome and unwelcome? What did she do in the intervening years and how will she adjust to being the ‘old lady’ to the teenagers as they join up for the first time in a WRAF which was already changing? Will she do the Nijmegen March again and maybe meet a man to change her life?
For those who have read the original book, which was written in 1964 but not published until 2009, this sequel written in 2015, answers all those questions and more. For others it is a window on life in the WRAF at a time when the world was a much more innocent place than it is now and a look at how things started to change.
It is not about being ‘at the sharp end’ or exploits of ‘derring-do’. It’s about having Air Force blue blood that never goes away, and passes from generation to generation. It also shows how life can be a series of circles.
Most of the names are real but one or two have been changed (to protect the guilty).