College Days

Leicester University

Elizabeth was the first person in her family to attend university and did not have a clear idea what career she would pursue. However, she had a yen to travel, and one of the appeals of the language program at Leicester University was spending a year in France as an assistante anglaise, teaching English to young women student teachers. She lived in Beauvais, about an hour North of Paris by train. Whenever she had time and money she would go to Paris to visit museums (the Rodin museum was one of her favorites), attend some classes at the Sorbonne and enjoy the ambience.

Leicester was still quite traditional and students were encouraged to wear a gown when they met with their professor. Her professor assumed all of the language students planned to spend their careers teaching French.

After the first year in the college dorm, she moved out and shared a house with a group of fairly radical students, and with a house-owner who had been active in protest movements. This was her first experience of living independently.

Meeting Mike

The summer after graduating from grammar school in 1964, she wanted to visit Italy with her friend Rosemarie who had an Italian boyfriend who invited them to Salerno in Sicily. To fund the trip, she got a summer job at the Butlins Holiday Camp in Clackton where she worked as a waitress serving 3 meals a day to the “campers”—families looking for an economical vacation. Serving hungry campers, she lost more than 10 pounds. She met Mike, who had a myriad of jobs at Butlins—brewing huge pots of tea, spreading butter on countless loaves of bread in the fish and chips shop, and cleaning windows. They hit it off and agreed to stay in touch—which they did.

Italy was Elizabeth’s first trip out of the UK. They had a great time and after the somewhat depressing post-war England, everything seemed very exotic, including small things like being served Coca Cola in a glass with ice.

Over the next 4 years Mike regularly hitchhiked between London and Leicester. He also came over to Beauvais where Elizabeth was teaching English and they enjoyed some wild times together in Paris. On one trip, probably after a few glasses of wine, Mike proposed to her on the Place de la Concorde.

Adventures in France and Germany

While they had very little money, Elizabeth and Mike managed to finance several trips to France and Germany where they hitchhiked, stayed in youth hostels and ate lots of cheap food and wine. When their funds ran low on one trip to Paris, they slept under bridges and in railway stations. The bridges were not as romantic as in the songs, and Elizabeth still complains about rats running across her neck.

On one of their hitchhiking trips in France, they stopped in a roadside cafe. They were approached by an elderly and rather drunk Frenchman who was delighted to know they were British. He announced to everyone that the British had been the allies of France, and he regaled them with his wartime adventures fighting side-by-side with the British. When they told him they were hitch-hiking, he announced he would arrange a ride for them. So, quite drunk by now, he staggered into the middle of the road waving his arms. A startled driver screeched to a halt, and our new friend announced, “You must give these two young people a ride because they are British and I fought beside them in the war”. He kindly agreed to give them a lift, and they eventually made it to Marseille and then Corsica.