Looking for runaway friend (From Witney Gazette)

Looking for runaway friend

8:18am Sunday 18th February 2007 in Witney

A WOMAN who ran off to London at the age of 11 in 1959 is trying to find the long-lost runaway friend who shared her adventures.

Irene Buckingham, 59, from Woodstock, was separated from her best friend, Marjorie, by their parents, after an adventurous escape from Leicester to London.

She would love to invite Marjorie to her 60th birthday party on March 31, but she cannot remember her surname.

Mrs Buckingham, née Binley, said: "I am always wondering what Marjorie might be doing, and how her life might have turned out.

"We had such an exciting two days before we were caught by the police, and she might remember different bits of the journey."

She has contacted newspapers in Leicester to see whether anyone remembers Marjorie or the police hunt when they went missing.

The two girls from Dale Girls' School, in Melbourne Road, Leicester, were in their uniform as they hitch-hiked across the country, pretending to be doing a paperchase.

They had to escape from a scary situation with a lorry driver and dodge people, who tried to turn them in to the police.

The girls slept in an old bomb site, and persuaded people to give them food, because they had no money.

Mrs Buckingham recalls that she was having a hard time at home, so she persuaded Marjorie to leave her own happier home to run away with her.

She said: "I didn't get on very well with my stepmother at the the time. I wasn't allowed to have friends over, but one day when my parents were out, some friends came over and explored the house. In my parents' room, we found an old gun from the war.

"There was a big row when my stepmother and father got home. At the time, I thought she might really kill me, so I decided to run away to my mother's house in London."

Mrs Buckingham describes her life since running away as eventful, since she found a sister that she did not know she had a few years later.

She now owns a gift and toy shop, called Perspective, on High Street, Woodstock.