Joyce Gee
Joyce talks about getting ready for a night at the Atalanta

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We used to go up the Atalanta, you know, oh yeah, dancing nearly every night. Course there was loads of soldiers in them days. We never had nothing to do with them - we were local, you know, liked New Haw boys and Byfleet boys, that sort of thing, and we all used to have fun together.

Oh that used to be great in them days. They used to have a lovely springy floor and we used to love - I loved jiving, I loved jiving! - and we used to walk - us girls, we used to walk in and could - you always knew who was going to come up and ask you, ‘Can you jive with me?’ – like, ’cause they used to have a jive only, you know, and everybody - and so, of course, your partner, your partners picked you already and we all used to get on the floor and jive, it used to be lovely, and the old floor used to spring up and down, ah it was great. We always used to meet loads of people at the Ata, you know. Yeah we always used to meet lots of people there, you know, like New Haw boys and people from Byfleet, people from Send. It used to be fun, you know. There was no sort of drinking. Oh we used to pop over the Red House and I’d probably have a lemonade, or – you know, I wasn’t allowed - my dad would have killed me in them days, come home drunk or anything!

We used to, like, go out and have fun, you know, like have our boyfriends, like girls do, you know, but it was always, ’Where you going?’ – you know – ‘Don’t you bring her home here late!’ and all this sort of thing. I mean, I had to be in at half ten of a night. I mean when I used to go to the Atalanta at quarter to twelve, that was ended, and if I wasn’t home, he’d be waiting on the doorstep, oh yeah, oh yeah! And he’d always say, ‘Thanks boys, thanks,’ - you know – ‘Thanks for bringing her home!’

Always had our ballerina shoes on. Now they were just flat black shoes, you could jive in them and dance in them and I’ll never forget, I bought a beautiful black wrapover skirt. It cost the earth, it cost £4, but it was a lovely skirt. I was very slim, very slim in my young day. So I used to have this black skirt, right, past the knee, nothing over the knee and these black, flat - we used to call them ballerina shoes. And yeah, we used to wear stockings with our little belt that went round the middle, the belt that went round the middle sort of thing, or if you didn’t wear anything, you just went bare legged.

We used to have a blouse with the old collar turned up, you know, each side, and - if you’ve seen Grease, well that reminds me of how we used to dress and ’course the three-quarter sleeves that turn back, our blouse, and having a slim figure and no midriff sort of thing, we used to tie it up in the middle, you know. So all these things today is what we wore back in the ’50s.