I’m not good at school. I don’t like it, and I leave for good at fifteen. My headmistress thinks it’s for the best and my mum’s okay with it on one condition: I must learn a trade. I can either go to secretarial school at Pitman College in Bromley or train to become a hairdresser. Hairdressing wins.

School breaks up in late July and I walk out of Marian Vian Secondary Modern school for the last time. There are no tearful goodbyes, no sorrowful exchanges of phone numbers with other girls. I’m happy not to be coming back and feel as if I’ve finally grown up. Mum finds me a course at Evelyn Paget College of Hair and Beauty in Bromley; she and Dad are willing to pay one hundred pounds for the six-month course that will allow me to skip the three years of drudgery that come with starting as a junior. I’ll start proper hairdressing faster and make better money than the poor juniors who have to work earning a pittance for all that time.

Evelyn Paget College sits two floors above Bromley High Street. You enter through a narrow stairway leading up to the reception; it’s lined with photos of the hairstyles of the day in gold frames. The top floor of the college is for beginners and paid students. I’ve been moved to the main floor, which is for more experienced hairdressers. Everything here is cut price: perms, cuts, tints, and shampoo and sets. The place is always crowded.

Most of us are girls, but there are a couple of men training as well. Colin, who’s a mod, wears a pink paisley shirt and a parka jacket – he rides a scooter with a furry tail on the aerial, it’s so cool. The other bloke is Peter, tall with a square jaw and large hands, who rides a BSA motorbike. He’s a rocker. Mods and rockers have a dreadful name in the papers. They’re sworn enemies and fight in gangs on the beach in seaside towns like Brighton and Margate, but Colin and Peter aren’t too serious about it. Everyone loves Peter, he’s funny and charming. We go out for a while, and I lose my virginity to him on the floor of my attic.

I’m popular with clients and quickly rack it up with both wages and tips. I put money on the table at the end of the week for Mum, and the rest is mine. Bromley is an ordinary London suburb with a market square that Medhursts department store sits on; Woolworths and the usual assortment of shops make up a typical high street, along with a couple of cinemas. I’m happy at work, I like the girls and enjoy doing hair. I feel confident in my choice.

Home is a different story. I have one brother and though we don’t have much in common, the one thing we do talk about is Mum’s moods. ‘Is Mum all right?’ is a mantra around the house. Mum and Dad live together but apart. They have separate bedrooms in our suburban semi-detached house. While they do normal things – go to work, eat meals, watch TV – to say they’re happy is a stretch.

My parents married straight after the war. Everyone did – the churches had never been busier. The government encouraged families and provided free milk and cheap lunches for children at school. Dad came back from France grateful to be alive and in one piece. He’d followed the front through France in a tank with his crew, repairing tanks, guns and whatever else was broken or left behind. One moonless night, they got lost and became separated from their battalion. Dad, in charge, decided to drive his tank across an empty field and into some woods. He carefully manoeuvred his way through the woods and on the other side lay a small village. They rolled with trepidation into the village and were surprised and delighted at the effusive welcome they received. Dad and his men were drunk for three days before they were found and rejoined the battalion.

When Dad was asked for a report, the senior officer couldn’t believe his story. The field he crossed was full of mines, the woods he crept through full of German soldiers. How did he do it and survive? He didn’t like to tell them what he told us: that spirits guided him. He was a spiritualist, a believer (his mother was a medium). To his officers, a hero. I’ve got his medals to prove it, and a certificate of bravery signed by Lord Montgomery.

Mum was a driver at Biggin Hill Airport during the war. Her job was to ferry silent pilots to their planes. As the sun went down, she would watch them take off for France, never knowing if they would come back. The waiting was endless, the thrill of their return monumental. She watched the Battle of Britain out on the street with her sisters and neighbours, dogfights in the sky. When the war ended, she missed the drama and excitement of her life at Biggin Hill. There wasn’t much of that at her mother’s house in Orpington. She met Dad in a local dance hall – they both loved to dance and flew around the floor in each other’s arms under the mirror ball, and before too long they walked down the aisle and tied the knot at a local church in Bromley.

They moved into 96 Cumberland Road and rented out the first floor to a family with children and the attic to one of Dad’s friends. I became best friends with their daughter Linda. When we were very little, Dad drove a huge, refrigerated truck all over England, delivering meat. He was away for days at a time, while Mum was at home with us. Eventually, he changed his job and became a chauffeur to Mr Robertson of the Hawker Siddeley Group, a company that primarily built planes; the Hawker Hurricane had great success in the Second World War.

There are still many late nights, but at least Dad sleeps at home now. At the weekends, he takes my brother out on his boat, his one great passion, while I’m left with my mum to sympathise about her thoughtless husband. The two of them come home late, smelling of salt – I want to go with them but it’s not on the cards.

One bit of light relief is the pirate radio stations. Radio Caroline and Radio London are a breath of fresh air in England. We all listen to them, Mum singing along to Ketty Lester or Ray Charles while doing the ironing. I pass my driving test when I’m seventeen and Dad helps me get my first car, an Austin A40. I love music, and with a car there’s live music everywhere. Linda – the girl who used to live upstairs – and I go to the Tiger’s Head or the Savoy in Catford. The floors are soft and sticky, the bars crowded and full of howling semi-drunk boys. My mum would call them ‘common’ or ‘oiks’ and would not like me to bring one home.

Linda and I try the Bromel Club in the Bromley Court Hotel. So many great bands play here: Pink Floyd, who drip oil on a revolving wheel that sends psychedelic shapes to a white sheet onstage, are like nothing else I’ve seen; I love Georgie Fame and The Blue Flames and the synchronised dancing of Geno Washington and The Ram Jam Band. The night Jimi Hendrix is scheduled to play, Linda has an earache and her mum won’t let her go. To my disappointment, we miss seeing what became, according to Bill Wyman at least, a truly historic performance.

When I finish training at Evelyn Paget, I’m sent to their Beckenham branch. Beckenham is a small town south-east of London, with St George’s Church at one end and the Regal Cinema at the other. It’s dotted with pubs and is full of young mums with prams and older people with shopping baskets. It’s a safe, prosperous suburb, posher than Bromley. Mum encourages me to say that we live in Beckenham or Park Langley, but Park Langley’s only claim to fame is the Chinese Garage, built like a pagoda in 1928. Beckenham hangs on to its middle-class status with no Wimpy Bar and only one or two 1960s-type coffee shops that serve foamy coffee, cheese and tomato sandwiches or beans on toast.

The road to London goes through Beckenham, past the Regal, and over Clock House Bridge. My mum thinks the world ends at Clock House Bridge and warns me about the perils of Penge on the other side. She says Penge is ‘common’ too, but she has no words for Brixton or Herne Hill and hopes I never break down there.

Traffic is moving at a crawl. I know I’ll be late, so I quickly apply mascara at the traffic lights before I park by St George’s Church. It is a quarter past nine when I walk through the salon door, and Doris, our elderly receptionist, glares at me. My first client is at the basin.

‘Good morning, Mrs Taylor.’

Mrs Taylor responds with an exasperated sigh. I give the nod to Heather, our junior, and walk into the staff room. Heather’s only been here a week and I should be watching her, but I need time to get into my dark-blue nylon uniform. I adjust my hair in the mirror and quickly apply some pale-pink lipstick before going out to check my trolley for rollers and pins.

Mrs Taylor comes up red and watery from the shampoo and says, ‘My neck’s wet and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not all down my back.’ She’s right, but I quickly put a dry towel around her neck and walk her to the chair.

‘It looks all right to me,’ I lie, flashing a murderous look at Heather. ‘Are you having a trim,...