Page 50 - Willi Distel Diary

Proofread for easier reading. Willi wrote this page in English himself.

Vivian, the only girl in the business, is one of the finest girls I ever saw. I don't mean merely that she is pretty, but that she is young and very fresh. She is always doing something, and never lazy. She started with the Indels at the same time as I did, to learn the trade. When she first came she was really a child, and I liked her at once; but after half a year she developed very quickly, and John began having fun with her. I held myself back, and for the first time in my life I was in love - though I could not have her, or rather I did not want to be in her way just as she was starting out in life. Everything went along nicely, until one night Mrs Indel spoke to me in a rather rough tone, and the next day Vivian refused to put a record on. That set me off, and the upshot was that I simply could not speak to her for over two months. When she won me round with kindness, I told her that I loved her - but that I did not mean to have her. Since then [...]

Interesting facts

Learning the trade. Vivian, like Willi, was serving an apprenticeship - the standard way of entering hairdressing, in which a beginner learned the craft on the job over several years. That shared start explains why the two young people were thrown together daily in the salon.
Putting a record on. Playing a record meant winding up a gramophone and setting a shellac disc spinning - the everyday way to fill a shop or salon with music in the late 1920s, before radio was common in every business. A refusal to change the record was a small but pointed snub.