Pages 50-71. In this chapter L J S describes the move to Southampton, her new surroundings and her work at Southampton University, where she studied not only mathematics but also music, Latin and English and her mother took up a number of opportunities teaching Classics. L J S mentions various tutors including a Miss Amelia Trout and a Dr Hamberger, who, she says, ‘made me into a real mathematician’ - ‘Hammy thought like a computer years before computers were invented’. She joined the Socialist Society and the Christian Union. She became a driver for the ARP and she describes the difficulties of driving an ARP truck in the blackout.
A large part of this chapter is devoted to the ‘War Diary of a Fresher’, reproducing L J S’s diary for 1942 with some commentary. In the diary she mentions friends, study, social events, concerts, playing the piano for Youth Club dances and a jazz band, going to the cinema with her mother, gardening, and CU meetings, against the background of war and ARP duties. In October 1942 she registered for the first year of a main degree course and signed up ‘to be a teacher so that I shall not have to give up my studies’ [ie so that she would not have to join the Auxiliary Territorial Service, for which she had received calling up papers in August 1942]. Numbers in brackets in various diary entries indicate the numbers of air raids.