Secretarial school

When she came to London when she was a teenager...

She enrolled at Mrs. Hoster's Secretarial School, which was in Chelsea, and was there for the education of already well-educated young women.

And they were taught shorthand and typing and all kinds of general good manners.

Her nickname, Chips, came from an uncle who'd been killed in the Great War.

Sheila is known as Bambi, like the animated deer.

After she goes to her grade school, she then attends Secretarial College and Swiss College in London.

In 1974, when she's 17, she discovers that she's pregnant by Colin.

So the Bambers at that time arranged for her to terminate the pregnancy.

I thought it was something on paper.

Yes, well, I'm sure that was necessary because I went to Secretarial College.

That was the thing to be when we were young.

Yes, courtesy of the government.

But

that's why you went to Secretarial College, because that was the...

Well,

no, it wasn't.

So she insisted I did a secretarial course.

And she did have a way of persuading me because she said, look, you want to be a writer? OK, learn to type.

You emerged from secretarial college.

And how do you how do the transition come from being someone who now can type, someone whose daydream is to be a writer and making the leap?