Female readers old enough to remember the times portrayed will find much to enjoy in this modest and gently humorous memoir, in which June O’Carroll Robertson looks back on the many remarkable experiences of her long and eventful life.
The daughter of a British Army officer whose duties took him abroad, June was brought up in Herefordshire by her grandparents. In early chapters she writes entertainingly about her youthful experiences - of her schooldays in England during World War Two and of her subsequent teenage years spent in Germany and Singapore after her father had been promoted to the rank of Major-General.
Her working life was also eventful. She spent three years working in the fashion business for couturier Norman Hartnell, after which she trained as a secretary, working briefly for an Archdeacon and a Royal Navy Commodore before travelling to the other side of the world to take up the position of personal secretary and lady-in-waiting to the wife of the Governor General of Australia. On returning to England she worked for a time as a floral decorator for world-famous florist and best-selling cookery writer Constance Spry.
She eventually married an Army officer and after seven years travelling the world as an Army wife she and her husband settled for good in the UK and she went to college as a mature student to re-train once again. For the following 20 years of her working life she was a Primary School teacher of 7-9 year-olds at a rural school in Southern England.
As can be imagined, her narrative contains a wealth of stories about the places she visited and the people she met. As the title of her book suggests, many of these are very amusing.