After painfully chugging through the first two books of the 'Game of Thrones' series, it was heartwarmingly refreshing to read this memoir of a 1930s scullery maid. A massive fan of the 'Downton Abby' television series, I felt as if I had been transported into one of their episodes and then some! Yet unlike the harsh 'downstairs' life that 'Downton Abby' portrays, the one that the author describes here is more carefree.Mollie was born in Norfolk during the middle of WWI, where her father was badly injured in a mustard gas attack. At 14 years of age, Mollie Moran's struggling family found her a post as an apprentice dressmaker, but she hated the idea. Instead, a family friend suggested that she take a job as a scullery maid in London, and she jumped at the idea. In 1930, the chance to travel to the exciting big city was just too good to pass up. Mollie lived and worked in one of the most expensive and fashionable parts of London, Cadogan Square.
Mollie would be up from 6am for a back breaking 15 hour day of work, with only two hours off in the afternoon. Scrubbing floors, peeling vegetables, laying tables, emptying the chambers pots! - the list was endless! But the compensations to Mollie's new life involved fancies such as dances, flirting with the delivery boys, and sharing a room with her new best friend for life Florence.Discover what it was really like to live downstairs as a domestic servant in this beautiful book that relays one girls rise from scullery maid to 'big house' kitchen cook.
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