Mavis Green

"We had to walk three miles to church"

I felt very bad leaving my mother because my father had passed away. Leaving my mother was very very hard. She took my departure very badly. I was the youngest at home. But Keith came to England a year before me. We were in love [laughs] and we both decided I should come here. My brother was in Wolverhampton. Most of my friends from school who grew up with me were also coming here. I was twenty two when I left home. The day I was leaving I woke up in the morning and my mother wasn't there. She said she couldn't stand to say goodbye to me, so I never met her before I left. I went to Kingston by car. My mother later told me she stood on a hill and watched the car go by.

(Interview by Sandra Charles, Ruth Cooksley, Simon Tibbs and Jay MacLeod)

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