[The author’s family moved from Stepney to Charing Cross in 1917 so her father, 'a Mains Foreman with the Electricity Company’ (p. 7) was nearer to his work. ‘The flat was owned by Dad’s company, so we lived rent free; it backed on to the Company’s property in St. Martin’s Lane, where all the huge generators were, which supplied electricity to all the theatres, shops, etc., in the West end’, p. 27]. 

I continued with my piano lessons at the London College of Music in Marlborough Street (a turning off Regent Street), where I had earlier taken my exams when I lived in Stepney. When I used to practice [at home] in the evenings, the proprietor of the cafe opposite, used to stand outside listening, entranced, and would say to Mother next day, how much he’d enjoyed it.