Black and white photograph of a group of young Cadets and adults in uniform on a carnival parade float. The Cadets hold up trophies. Behind them is a crowd of onlooking lining the road.

Celia Streeter (née Bradbury)

Joined 1953

Winchester Nursing Cadet Division, Hampshire

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A black and white group photograph of the Winchester St John Ambulance Brigade Division. In the foreground seated on the floor are female Nursing Cadets wearing grey dresses and berets and male Ambulance Cadets wearing grey shirts with white haversacks worn across their bodies. Behind the Cadets stand adult nursing and ambulance members. The men are wearing St John Ambulance’s black and white number one uniform and the women are wearing knee length grey dresses with white aprons over the top. 
Winchester St John Ambulance Brigade Division at Broadlands, Hampshire, 1953 Image courtesy of Celia Streeter
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Transcript

Oh yes, we always had Saturday nights we had a social evening, as it was called then, because that would be before discos. It would be a social evening. There would be all sorts of – we had some people that did old-time dancing and that sort of thing and the Cadets were allowed to go along to that. After a certain age we were allowed to go or you could go before if your parents went with you. Yeah, we had socials with the adult division. We used to play records and this sort of thing and then eventually things change and we had discos and when I was Superintendent Geoff used to run the discos for the Cadets and we did sort of – we were raising money for the building. We used to do sort of twenty-four hour discos, sponsored discos in the headquarters, so that we could put money into the building, the new building we were going to move into.

I went to the opening of Chichester Theatre and the Queen Mother was there. Grand Prior Cadets were asked to go and sell programmes so we went down. That wasn’t just Hampshire. They were from the surrounding counties and, as I say, we went down to Chichester and we used to sell programmes and the Queen Mother was there and she came and spoke to us all. She was very, very lovely. We also had a big, big parade with Princess Margaret and she did the – she was like the inspecting Officer. It was a very, very hot day and an awful lot of people fainted. I can remember that. It was very, very hot and there were First Aid posts around and she went round the First Aid posts and saw the people as well because apparently she was very kind to them, you know, and say, “Sorry did I keep you standing too long in the sun?”  Yeah, so they were good events.

Excerpt courtesy of Celia Streeter