dovegreyreader scribbles

Jean Becomes a Nurse ~ Yvonne Trewin SRN

I’m not sure why I picked this up. Maybe it was all the news about Nightingale Hospitals, but anyway there it was.

I have a shelf full of these because I lapped them up as a girl who was always going to be a nurse (blame my mum, the uniform was the only thing in the dressing up box) and I think the SRN was about giving this novel for girls a bit of credibility as in...here is someone who knows their stuff. And I have to say, written as it was in 1961, only eleven years before I would start my training, things hadn't changed much by the time I started in PTS (Preliminary Training School) at Gt Ormond Street.

Putting on the uniform for the first time and feeling a bit of a fraud whilst hoping no one would collapse in front of you. I wasn't there but one of our set witnessed someone jumping under a tube train and the crowd on the platform parting like the Red Sea at the sight of her nurse's uniform that shed only been wearing for a matter of days. The motto behind this was to do up all the buttons on your hospital issue gaberdine raincoat when travelling.

Then there was the good old fashioned discipline, the Sisters you loved, the Sisters you didn't, the tutors who understood us and those who seemed more remote. My encounters with The Big Bruiser (as we fondly named her) still give me nightmares.

And then all the doubts and fears amongst the intake. Those of us who felt fairly sure we'd done the right thing, those who were plagued by doubt and would either put shoulder to the wheel or leave. We all learned quite quickly that getting emotional at the work wasn't going to help us at all, we'd need a teflon coating to survive, and those who stayed became a supportive and close-knit community, someone's door was always open, the kettle was always on somewhere.

Going home with friends for days off. My roommate's family lived in Heptonstall, her father's chauffeur would meet us at Manchester station and drive us there. When she came to stay with me my dad would meet us in the Vauxhall Viva. When Diana goes home with Jean she is mightily impressed by the dove-grey walls glowing softly in the sunlight, the curtains and chair coverings in cretonne with a pink and wine flowery design and the black carpet.

Jean is struck down by appendicitis which we can all see coming (except Jean) and she is whisked off to sick bay. I had to go to sick bay in a taxi in the middle of the night from our PTS home in Belsize Park. I know exactly which Chinese restaurant in Hampstead gave me food poisoning, but I'd better not mention it as a quick google check and I see it's still there. But heavens was I ill. They kept me in for days and I was like bambi when I finally emerged.

It's all captured in Yvonne Trewin's surprisingly readable book and I have to say I had a good old wallow whilst conveniently forgetting all the terrible times.

And I'm really sorry but I had to smile over this picture, the frontispiece to Jean Becomes a Nurse...

I mean...what exact bit of Jean is the doctor looking at in making his assessment that "She'll make an excellent nurse." How times and attitudes have changed.

And I'm thinking that there must have been other books trying to steer young girls into particular professions but I can't think of any now, can you...

And as always please do share your memories of these books, or their ilk, were they your childhood reading fare too.

 

The Luminaries

It seemed to appear out of nowhere, because I'm not really sure I knew it was even being filmed, but the six-part series of The Luminaries is coming to BBC One very soon.

It was all enough to make me drag the book from the shelf only to discover that it is five years since I read it, and that was before I had ever visited New Zealand. or done the entire Luminaries Trail around South Island.

We first drove from Christchurch to Clyde and cycled a hundred miles or so across the gold fields of Otago and the Maniototo, following the old railway line to Middlemarch...

It was dramatic, very hot and shadeless and no, I hadn't ridden a bike for about thirty years, and no I hadn't trained in the slightest despite saying I would, and yes I did wear padded shorts, and yes I absolutely did plead for an electric bike on the second day. And I got one and sailed around the rest like a pro.

But the scenery was magnificent and just to be there, 11,000 miles from home felt extraordinary ...especially now when I can't envisage even going into Plymouth just twenty miles away...no scrap that, into Tavistock a mere six miles away.

Having wild camped our way across to the much damper and cooler Westland, and made the acquaintance of those innocent little black dots called sand flies that give you the worst bite ever (and in quantity), Offspringette and I spent a day in Hokitika following the Luminaries trail. New Zealand is really good at the small museums in small places that do these wonderful tableaux reconstructions of What Life Was Like and I really enjoyed every one that I found. They are scattered around the old gold field sites and are chock full of artefacts and information, enough to give an impression of life for the early prospectors..

I'm slightly embarrassed to say that it was all a bit moving to find myself standing on the grass, on top of the gold fields, alongside Lake Kaniere (pronounced 'canary') and feeling quite emotional. I can completely understand why people love to come to the UK and follow in the footsteps of James Herriot, or travel on the railway to Hogwarts, in order to bring the books they have loved to life. 

And then looking at the photograph again this week, and then at my feet now, to see that I'm still wearing the same shoes four plus years on ( bought in a sale in Christchurch the week before we set off) this very minute. If that's not a good advert for Keen Targhee III trainers I don't know what is, even if they are now in a bit of a sorry state and I have some replacements to wear in. 

But they won't be the same because they haven't actually set foot there if you see what I mean (this might just be me, getting sentimental of course). Offspringette bought me a pounamu in Hokitika, a 'koru' spiral which I love and have worn every day since. And every morning, when I put it on again, I remember her and that day, and the fact that to be given one means you will go back again....or so the Kiwi working in a shop in Plymouth, who saw it, told me one day.

Anyway, with fondest memories of Hokitika I settled myself momentarily in the Sunny Chair at about 10.30 on Monday morning to read the first chapter of The Luminaries again. This felt highly illegal (surely morning reading must be non-fiction, learned and improving, to be legitimate) but was unanimously approved as permissible, and before I knew it I was back on South Island and the gold fields, but another interesting thing happened too.

Looking back I see that I found the book mystifying when I read it in 2015 and had to ask for your help in deciphering and persevering, and I'm not really sure I had completely grasped those nuances by the end either, (I'll dig out the original post for redux) and yet here I am 200 pages in and sailing through with ease and clarity. I'm sure having walked those shores helps no end because I have images in my mind.

And with that another connection landed plop into my mind too. Adele Geras kindly sent me something in the post recently and included this postcard of Lucy Boston's High Magic patchwork quilt. The card now sits on my desk...

Is this not The Luminaries in fabric...

And I'm transported back to that wonderful day at Hemingford Grey when Diana Boston gave Bookhound and I a tour and showed us the quilts.

Isn't it amazing where imagination and memories and a book can take you.

Meanwhile have you read The Luminaries and will you be watching...

And what about literary or artistic trails and travels...are there any you have done or would like to...

Anyone's footsteps you would love to follow...

Incidentally...

The best concoction known to mankind for repelling sandflies, and invented by the Christchurch cohort, is a mixture of baby oil and Dettol. Nothing and no one else will come near you either.

Robin & Heather Tanner

Early on in ‘proceedings’ I and two of my group of  friends, who meet several times a year from around the country, decided that in the absence of our traditional summer gathering perhaps we would read a book together.  The three of us settled on Wiltshire Village by Heather and Robin Tanner.

There followed the whole business of ordering a copy of the now out-of-print book online and awaiting its arrival. Mine was the last to arrive and I was about ready to mug the postman on each successive day that he drove straight past. This whole ‘waiting for the post’ has only got a whole lot worse because I’m not sure any of us could have imagined the reading trails that one small book, published in 1939, would open up for us....and the subsequent books we would be ‘forced’ to buy.

Robin and Heather were an arts and crafts couple. True to their values both spiritually and aesthetically, and kindred spirits from the day they first met as teenagers in Chippenham at the end of the First World War, forging a creative life together that makes for the most fulfilling exploration all these years on

Robin trained as a teacher, became a schools inspector but was also an artist of prodigious talent, specialising in etching, whilst Heather, with her First Class degree in English Literature, could provide the written word to accompany his work. Wiltshire Village was their first collaboration and is a fresh and vibrant now as the day it was first published. Recording what, even then, was a vanishing way of life, I have revelled in a book whose traces still echo today in the countryside here. Along with the village buildings and crafts there are beautiful accounts of the village year and the people, all accompanied by Robin's etchings. 

There was much discussion here over coffee one day about the Wiltshire hoop-raved wagon. How practical it was, the width of the wheel base to fit the ruts in the track, the outward tilt of the wheels and how these wagons would doubtless have been trundling up and down the lanes around us here....and how the carved decoration and chamfering was about removing as much unnecessary wood as possible to lighten the weight of the whole.

At a time when life has felt a little as if it has stepped back more than a few decades it’s been good to be reminded of how things used to be...

’There was no room for petty selfishness in true craftsmanship; whoever found a new way or improved on an old one shared the discovery and it became part of the tradition followed by all the fellow craftsman who came after him...’

And I find myself relating that to the now and the worldwide collaboration in science and research as we seek ways to treat and improve life chances with the latest affliction. New advances are shared and publicised and we can only hope that, whilst a vaccine may be a long way off, if it does happen its discovery and production will be a worldwide endeavour.

Talking of the postman, or in this case post mistress, she gets a mention in Wiltshire Village (based on Robin and Heather's home village of Kington Langley) along with the complexities of delivering letters to a scattered community many of whom may have the same surname. We love our postie and hats off to him for the round that he has to do. 

It reminded me of my early days as a twenty-four-year old rookie rural health visitor. Finding my way around the byways of West Devon and Dartmoor and being paid for it (and with car provided) was quite the novelty in 1978. However, when the only address I had was a cottage name and the village, with no postcode or satnav to guide me, my arrival was often a lengthy process. I would be wholly reliant on the older health visitors who would give me instructions that invariably started with ‘Turn left/right/go straight at Pridham’s Garage...’ The Garage is still there albeit under a different name, and we still direct people to our house by the same method..turn left at the garage, turn right after a hundred yards, go straight for two miles, only house you come to on the right. 

I wonder if many of you have recently reconnected with that sense of community that was a given in the days of Wiltshire Village. For most of us our radius from home had shrunk to about a two miles, and it was the introduction to another book, The Open Air - An Anthology of English Country Life by Adrian Bell that made me think...

’Another form of isolation has been brought by motors into country districts. ones circle of friends is no longer the circle of a ten mile radius ...one friend is forty miles in one direction, another twenty-five miles in another, half a dozen are in London...thus people living in a place may have no part in that place fundamentally, or in any place.

I hadn’t really given this much thought ...the advent of the car and what it must have meant...

’Whereas in the old days whoever lived round about you, unless they were extremely difficult, you fitted into your circle of friendship. The more socially gifted thus helped out the less, and the whole was leavened. Now, by more peremptory standards we choose only those with whom we are ‘in sympathy’, the spontaneous functions of local life consequently decay and the number of lonely old people must be legion.’

First published in 1936 The Open Air is, as Adrian Bell suggests, ‘an attempt to catch some glint of the genius of the country in an oblique, perhaps the only way.’ The world order was shifting and I’m grateful that visionaries like Adrian Bell, and  Robin and Heather Tanner, captured it and pinned it down before it was lost.

The three of us have exchanged almost daily emails and Wiltshire Village has led naturally along the Robin Tanner trail to his book of letters From Old Chapel Field and his autobiography Double Harness (more work for the postman) both of which are (or were) readily available at You Know Where and reveal more about this astonishing man.

Robin was a gentle soul, kind and caring, loved his friends and treasured their friendships, but was also an inspired and intuitive educationalist with connections to Dartington Hall and courses there in the 1960s along with countless other artists and crafts people. Every page offers up another name to be researched, another trail to follow...I’m currently happily diverted into the world of 1930’s textile designers Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher (even more work for the postman) and their indigo vat and block printed fabrics.

It's been such an inspirational journey so far and there is a way to go yet.

Meanwhile I'd be interested to know if any of you have heard of Robin Tanner....read his books or seen his etchings (maybe even own one)...

Or whether you too have found some inspirational reading trails to follow in recent weeks...

And how about that sense of community...has it flourished were you are...

Our village has established a weekly Covid Chronicle. We all submit our copy and can't wait for each edition to arrive by e mail....there have been walking treasure hunts, photography competitions, someone's created a socially distanced five hole golf course on one of their fields, there are offers to shop and collect prescriptions, there's a plant swap in the church porch and generally everyone is getting to know each other in a way that they might not have done before.

We are all very excited about the party that we will have eventually.

Footnote...

Incidentally the senior health visitors were much better at directions than doctors. The ‘next left’ on one set of definitive instructions from a GP turned out to be a dried up river bed and there was quite a lot of bother and much hilarity extricating myself....'Oh, I didn’t mean ‘that’ left,’ he said when I finally got back.

Morabor ut in cochlea pace

I know there must be gazillions of people struggling with all this but is anyone else finding their lives  are morabor ut in cochlea pace ...slowing down to snail's pace (thank you google translator ...high risk strategy and I'll await corrections from the classicists out there).

And, setting all the worries and anxieties aside (and I no way diminish these, we all have them) perhaps not really minding that it has for a while...

In fact I'm almost taking advantage of permission to do so before we all have to return to civilisation and full diaries, and feeling that we must get out and about, and visit places and worry about R being above one (new language) and wearing masks (new fashion) ...and...and..

Botanical wanderings have been a real exercise for me in looking closely, and I see from your comments the other day for many of you too, and I am really grateful to Marilyn,a reader of the scribbles in the U.S., who wrote to tell me about the late Brian Doyle and a book of his collected essays One Long River of Song - Notes on Wonder. I downloaded a sample to my Kindle and realised very quickly that here was more writing for the now, and a book that I needed in my hand, one I could slot into the Read-a-Chapter-Daily category. I have rather too many of those at the moment, but all up-lifting in the face of so much that can be down-casting; books I will treasure in the years ahead as saviours when I look back on this time. I must confess I sometimes find books like this can be a bit sentimental and schmaltzy, a bit too pseudo-spiritual for this lapsed Anglican, and dare I say embarrassing, but nothing could be wider of that mark than Brian Doyle's writing...

"When Brian Doyle died of brain cancer at the age of sixty, he left behind dozens of books -- fiction and nonfiction, as well as hundreds of essays -- and a cult-like following who regarded his writing on spirituality as one of the best-kept secrets of the 21st century. Though Doyle occasionally wrote about Catholic spirituality, his writing is more broadly about the religion of everyday things. He writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the holiness of small things, and about love in all its forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, friendly love, love of nature, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon.

At a time when our world feels darker than ever, Doyle's essays are a balm for the tired soul. He finds beauty in the quotidian: the awe of a child the first time she hears a river, the whiskers a grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every day -- but through his eyes, nothing is ordinary...."

Here's Brian remembering a moment when he looked at shrew...

Looked very closely...

'But there was something beyond curiosity or the startle of astonishment. For just an instant I paid attention with every shard and iota of my being. Maybe we couldn't survive if we were like that all the time, I don't know. But when it happens we see that which none of us can find words for. Sometimes we are starving to see every bit of what is right in front of us.'

Well I looked at the hawthorn flowers the other day...really closely and for a long time because I didn't have to be anywhere else, or do anything else because I have all the time in the world to do things right now...and had I ever noticed the pink bits before...

Cast not a clout ‘til May is out. Richard Mabey confirms it is the Hawthorn or May Tree blossom not the month that sees us putting away the thermals. The blossom banished from houses and that apparently has the ‘smell of the Great Plague.’

Since this all began I've been thinking I MUST keep a diary, must write it all down, but write what down. It wasn't until April 23rd, St George's Day, that I found a new A4 notebook and the right mood and actually wanted to start...and then it would be nothing about the Big Thing but it would be all the little tiny things.

The new flowers I'd seen...

The goldfinch that sat on the branch and sang for me...

The little patch of Lady's Smock right at the far end on the left of Hill Long Acre and discovering that the Orange Tip butterflies feed on it.

The nature reference books piled up on the computer-less writing desk in the book room...

Incidentally I spent about two hours sorting this desk....

Polishing it, finding 'things' for the windowsill, creating a nice place to sit and write and think and look things up in books rather than google..

Finding out all there is to know about sycamore trees because I walk to this one every day. Introduced to England in 16th century, naturalised since the 1630s, and might it be so ancient that it is approaching the 400 year limit of its life...

It would be a sad day.

And discovering that the leaves from Germander Speedwell, currently creating little lakes of blue in the hedgerows, were used in tea as a treatment of gout. Years ago I bought a copy of Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey, a charity shop find, and it is invaluable for diagnosing and explaining my field discoveries.

And then a good close stare at some lichen before realising I didn’t really know much about that either..

Lichen experts out there...might it Parmotrema perlatum...suddenly I need to know the right names.

Finally looking up which butterflies hibernate... Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, Peacock, Red Admiral and Brimstone and keeping an eye out, even following a few in the hope they will settle for my camera.. 

Then I needed to know the meaning of 'purlieu' ,because I am also reading a letter a day from The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White, first published in 1789 (when that sycamore tree might already have staked its claim on that corner of Bramble Park). Finding no copy on the shelf I treated myself to the edition from Little Toller Books with engravings by Eric Ravilious. Little Toller a small publisher I really don't want to lose through this and so doing my tiny bit to support them. The book arrived post free within days and with some lovely postcards included.

Purlieu : Originally land severed from an English royal forest by perambulation of an adjacent landowner's boundaries, but it can also mean a frequently visited place, a haunt. That might mean my desk too, because having prettified it I might then have spent another two hours sitting at it and staring out of the window.

I really am living the poem and I doubt I'm the only one who is purposely creating a little holiday from their day to day life as a way of managing the bigger picture. The W.H.Davies lines might be a bit hackneyed and cliched from overuse these days, but they are nevertheless still true...

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.

I know the worries for many of you may still be huge, but I hope you are all finding time to stand and stare too.

And do you have any more Chapter-a-Day reading suggestions...

 

 

Florence Nightingale's 200th anniversary & No Place for Ladies ~ Helen Rappaport

It was March 20th 2007 when I wrote about Helen Rappaport's first book, No Place For Ladies - The untold story of women in the Crimean War and here we are thirteen years later, Helen and I firm friends and how delighted I am that the book has been reprinted for the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birth. 

Not only do we have the Nightingale Hospitals, raised within days as our insurance against an NHS overwhelmed (beds thankfully not needed in quantity, but not yet decommissioned) but the arrival of Covid 19 has seen the nation pull together in many similar ways to the Victorians, though faced with a war on a different front. It would seem that the human instinct to support, to raise funds, to help and be useful, and to make things that will help those who are fighting on the front line remains undiminished by time, change and progress. Substitute scrubs for muffattees and there you have it.

And so in honour of the book's reincarnation I have dusted off that original post from the scribbles basement along with a comment that Helen left at the time. 50% of the royalties from any sales of the book will go to St Thomas's Hospital where the Nightingale nurse training school was established in 1860.

 

If a book can help me chip into a new seam of reading then it's worth its weight in gold and No Place For Ladies by Helen Rappaport has done exactly that. I've hit the mother-lode with this one and am now a mine of information on all things interesting about the Crimean War. I can bore the muffatees off anyone so here's a selection of my Crimean Cameos pronounced over kitchen table coffee at the weekend...

"Did you know that Queen Victoria asked Lord Rokeby to take a break from military duties and go out and pick her a nosegay of flowers in the Crimea and he did? It was sent back to England and is preserved at Windsor Castle to this very day"

"Do you know one nurse assisted at 56 amputations in 30 hours...or was it 30 in 56?"

"Do you know Prince Albert designed the Victoria Cross and they are all made from the metal of the guns?"
"Everyone knows that and they're running out"
"So where were the guns captured then?" Silence..."Ah see, Sebastopol"

"Do you know the soldiers dug up Crimean snowdrop bulbs and sent them home?"

I won't tell you anymore but rest assured there is plenty more in this extremely readable account of the role of the women at the Front and one that you desperately want to talk about afterwards, especially if like me you have a bit of a gap in your Crimean War knowledge

.
Florence Nightingale was busy trying to keep order and discipline in the nursing world, Mary Seacole was out there as the hostess with the mostest providing food and supplies as well as her vast array of very effective alternative remedies.Wherever there was a need Mary Seacole seemed to be the one to anticipate and fulfill it, red tape was there to be ignored.

Meanwhile the army wives, who were allowed to travel in small numbers with each regiment, seemed to struggle to find a role for themselves beyond attempting to care for their husbands and living in utter squalor and poverty as it became clear the army could barely look after itself, let alone its women.
Whenever I lay hands on a book like this I turn first to the bibliography to see what else might be worth reading.Helen Rappaport's research is formidable and there is a wealth of other reading to choose from and one book in particular that you will certainly want to read It's the day to day events that are so fascinating and if it hadn't been for Mrs Fanny Duberley's diary I suspect a great deal of this would remain a mystery. Fanny was the army wife with a difference and her diary a superb primary source.

Helen left this comment on that post back in 2007...

'I'm so glad you enjoyed the book Lynne. For me as a social historian it was a joy digging out the small but forgotten anecdotes about the war - such as the knitting instructions for mittens published in the Patriotic Journal or seeing the nosegay of Crimean flowers so lovingly preserved in the queen's album at Windsor, or the descriptions of Queen Victoria's solicitous sending of false teeth and prosthetic limbs to the wounded whom she visited. There was one aspect of the war I never quite found a way of working into the story though - and that was one or two Crimean 'romances', including the racy story of an English officer's wife who disappeared one day and weeks later was spotted shacked up with a French officer over in the French camp. So many wonderful stories that give a much more rounded view of ordinary people enduring a totally senseless war that take the story beyond all the tedious military strategy and the fighting. I really didn't want to get to the end of it! And still feel bereft ... but then, I have about six great big fat files full of research on Mary Seacole .... there's a lot more to her story yet to be told.'

I know Helen is currently writing a book about the White Russian emigrées in Paris before and after the Russian revolution, but who knows perhaps one day we'll get her definitive biography of Mary Seacole. 

Meanwhile a casualty in the current situation has been the Florence Nightingale Museum, at St Thomas's Hospital in London, who were preparing to stage an exhibition to celebrate the bi-centenary and of course are now closed.  The exhibition can be viewed online and having had a browse I can confirm that a virtual visit will keep you nicely occupied for an afternoon. Then maybe add them to your list of places to be supported and visited once London reopens....it would be very sad indeed to lose some of these collections.

Thank you...and tomorrow...

I wanted to say a huge thank you to all who left a comment on the VE Day post.

I'm still replying to each of you, and I will reply to everyone, but one of the highlights of the whole emotional day was reading those stories here and from people across my social media places, about their parents' and friends' wartime experiences. It made me realise how so many of us treasure those memories with so much love and pride and so the flame of gratitude burns on from one generation to the next.

It was a remarkable day and one you all contributed to in comments and I am so grateful.

I'm just dropping by today to let you know we have another 'celebration' on here tomorrow.

It will be the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale and Helen Rappaport will be dropping in an out of comments during the day to answer any questions you might have for her. Not only about No Place For Ladies...Helen's book about the women of the Crimean War, and which is being republished this week, but I'm sure she will happily talk about  her other books too. There will be a post about No Place For Ladies appearing tomorrow morning and where you can leave any questions for Helen in comments.

Helen's other books include her Romanov titles ... Ekaterinberg, Four Sisters  and The Race to Save the Romanovs as well as Magnificent Obsession about Victoria and Albert, along with Beautiful Forever - Madame Rachel of Bond Street Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer.

And if we're lucky Helen might also tell us a little bit about the book that she is working on at the moment.

Please do stop by.

 

We’ll Meet Again...

It’s is the seventy-fifty anniversary of Victory in Europe today. A day that marked the end of World War Two in the West at least, after almost six long years of conflict. Perhaps some people are thinking it’s time to let it go, move on, except we're far from thinking that. The lane is dressed overall and we are ready...

My dad always said he could never fully share the elation of VE Day, having just been posted to a ship that would be heading to the Far East where the war was still be decided...and they had been prepared and trained for serious fighting. The Tinker (Len) was under no illusion that this could be to the death. In the end events took a different turn in August 1945 and his ship was tasked with bringing the survivors home from the POW camps in Singapore...something he never forgot.

Having recently put those hundreds of letters that Len write to my mum (Vera) away for now I took out a few dated May 1945 just to get a feel for the mood of the moment. They have known each other about a year. things have been a bit on and off but there is talk of 'getting engaged' though Len isn't quite sure what he's supposed to do because he's never been 'engaged' before...does he have to ask someone...how can they buy a ring if he's miles away...is it fair on Vera if he's going to be away for several years which seems likely.

Len is now in the fighting ranks of the Royal Marines (rather than a bugler) on board a new ship in Portsmouth waiting to sail and has watched a training film entitled ‘Existence in the Jungle’...‘Hopeful isn’t it’ he writes to Vera. That same week he goes ashore and sees Flanagan and Allan in Dreaming which was ‘alright’ followed by White Cliffs of Dover which made him ‘ a bit on the sad side’

...which he didn’t need because he was feeling sad enough at what was ahead, and being parted from the love of his life for goodness knows how long. 

Then I read this, and remembering Len was a mere twenty years old...

'I expect by the time you get this the war in Germany will be all over and you will be getting back to peace routine again. It’s wonderful to think that all the danger to folks back home is over and you haven’t got to worry about bombs, doodle-bugs and rockets. You might think I’m soft but I’m going to church on Sunday to offer a few prayers of thanks for seeing my family, your family and a lot of other people’s families safely through the night. I think it’s about the second time I’ve ever been to church willingly, the other time was when I was christened, but I’m sure He will forgive me for that....’

Incidentally given that he had left school at fourteen I am very impressed with my dad's spelling, not a single correction required.

Then something that made me smile...

’Mum says that they have taken down the shelter in the back room and are decorating with big Victory ribbons...’

My grandparents, eschewing the discomforts of a cold damp air raid shelter in the garden, had built theirs in the dining room right in front of the fire, and kitted it out with all mod cons.

Len goes on to say...

'I think I have forgotten what a street fully lit and all the other things that go with peace look like...'

He's also been reading in the press about how many medals he will get...he thinks five. There then follows a bit of a diatribe about Hitler having taken his own life when it’s clear Vera and Len had a few choice things lined up for the man who had stolen their teenage years ...‘It’s not fair is it’ says Len, and I found myself agreeing. I think they were entitled to those feelings, but I also found myself understanding the importance and sheer enormity of the moment. The relief and the nation's need to rejoice and celebrate must have been profound. 

We might all be stuck at home but we’re safe enough where we are right now. For six years no one had felt safe anywhere and certainly not in their homes. No wonder they kicked up their heels and let rip and it sounds like they do certainly did...

'I have had a letter from home and it seems like they celebrated with a vengeance. They all had a tea party in the road and once the children had finished the grown ups sat down to tea, cleared away and everybody had their wirelesses out in the street and they danced until four in the morning. How I wish I could have been there...’

This picture of my grandparents says it all I think, whether it was taken on VE day or not they certainly loved to dance.

My poor dad missing out on all the fun at home, though it seems there was a bit of a knees up on the ship after all...

'I am only just beginning to recover from the VE celebrations. Oh boy!! What a week, we've had to stop as the flowing bowl floweth no longer...we had a victory march through the town yesterday and as you can guess it ended up in the rain...but there was much merry-making.

The night finished off with fireworks and bonfires. Some of the bonfires weren't satisfied with stopping at bonfires, they burnt a few houses down in the end I'm afraid, much to the enjoyment of the people watching, except the people in the house! I think they were in the state where you get past worrying about such petty things.

I bet London had a real crazy night though, I wish we could have been there...I can just imagine what Piccadilly and Oxford Circus were like that night. I bet it was bedlam and some fat heads next morning too'

So anyway, in solidarity and with remembrance and thanks, that’s why we’ve draped the hedge in bunting today and hung out the Union Jack. We'll be getting as near as we can to the village for our daily excursion, this to coincide with a socially distanced national minute's silence at 11am where we have been asked as a nation to remember, but also to think of those who have lost their lives in recent months too. There will be the playing of Last Post and Reveille and we’ll be having a jolly good Victory Tea Party of our own when we get home.

We’ll be singing We’ll Meet Again from afar, with the rest of the nation, and we’ll raise a cup of tea (or a glass of ginger beer) to all of you too, wherever you are and to absent family and friends as well...
 
Meanwhile, here's Flanagan and Allen singing Dreaming (to a horse it seems) from the film that my dad thought was 'alright'. 

As his letters show, he and my mum were doing a lot of dreaming in those years they were apart... my dad has heard there will be 100,000 prefabs built...maybe they could get one (they didn't)...lets think about curtains and carpet he suggests. If only they could have known then that they would eventually be together for over fifty years.