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	A Sunday Escapade
Sundays for my sister Elsie and I, the youngest of our family of five girls, were sometimes quite uninteresting. For example going for a walk with our dolls pram was not allowed on Sunday. We had to go to Sunday School in the morning and when we returned home there was little to do until dinner time which was midday. We lived in premises behind and above our Corn Chandlers shop on a very busy road in Merton, Surrey. On this particular Sunday we were both dressed in our Sunday best dresses with frills and sashes, and our hair was carefully combed and plaited or in ringlets. Once we arrived home from Sunday School we had to wear pinafores over our dresses. These pinafores were carefully starched and had epaulettes around the top of the arms which were crimped with a hot goffering iron - all very pretty, but we didn’t appreciate them and thought they were fussy. We were told to go for a walk until dinner was ready. I think I might have been about eight years old then. So we walked and kept coming back and asking was dinner ready. There was very little traffic and few people about on Sundays so we were bored. Actually, bored was a word we never used out loud otherwise we knew that we would be given jobs to do! Eventually we decided to walk a bit further which we knew we shouldn’t be doing as we were told “don’t go far away”. Then we decided to go a little further and a little further until we realised that we were on the road that Dad always took when he drove us to our farm, which was looked after by a distant relative. We walked and walked and got quite excited when we realised that if we kept going we would reach the farm which was about five miles from home. I don’t think either of us ever thought that we would be missed and that people would be searching for us. When eventually we reached the farm we were very tired but happy at our achievement. Our uncle came to meet us and asked where was Dad? We happily told our story and were surprised when he didn’t appreciate our long walk. Instead he said, “Your parents will be searching for you. Get into the back of the trap (a horse-drawn, two wheeled vehicle) and get under this blanket. I expect the police will also be looking for you.” We felt very deflated, hungry and anxious by then as we began to realise that what we had thought was a wonderful adventure was going to get us into real trouble. However Mum and Dad were so pleased to see us safe and well that after a good scolding things settled down and we began to think that our long walk was being appreciated after all. We also decided that we had no wish to repeat the adventure.