Rosemary’s chapters are light-hearted and fun. She is a bubbly shop girl who works in the millinery department, also assisting their milliner to make hats for their most fashion conscious and stylish customers at G. A. Heyworth’s, an elegant ladies department store in Cambridge. She is the youngest lead shop girl featured in The Shop Girls.

Her chapters include  many true stories of tragedy and joy. Rosemary was devastated at the death of her school friend Judy (pictured second left) who also worked as a shop girl with her, she tragically suffered from a weakened heart after swallowing river water as a child when she was learning to swim in the River Cam, and her mother never told a soul about the doctor’s dreadful prognosis, that Judy would die young. But there is much humour too, describing the hilarious incident when Judy and her sister Val were kidnapped by pranking students and auctioned off during a riotous Rag Week.

The husband of milliner, Mrs Pugh, made glass eyes at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and she stunned the shop girls one day by coming in to work with a pair of ear rings made from artificial eyes – long before Jimmy Saville used them for personalised jewellery.

And what happened when the millinery workroom was overrun by thousands of maggot, thanks to the pheasant feathers brought in by the Marchioness of Cambridge who wanted them to be added to her latest new her hat, and would shortly be coming in to collect it to wear at the races? How did Rosemary save the day, and keep the Marchioness happy?

Rosemary marries a dashing policeman who she meets at a Cambridge dance and her chapters describe the rivalry between local lads and American GIs, and the Swinging 60s scene in Cambridge.

Rosemary, always one to take up a challenge, is persuaded by the shop girls she went on holiday with to Butlins to enter their beauty contest. Did her good looks and sparkling personality win the judges over, who asked her: “How long have you been a model?”

You can find out Rosemary’s reply and enjoy many more warm hearted stories about the shop girls by downloading her story here from kindle. I hope you enjoy it.