I have now completed my grandmother's entries for the month of January 1943 and I thought I'd jot down a few reactions:
- I was quite wrong when I said that Gran seemed blissfully unaware of, or uninterested in, the fact that there was a war going on. No sooner had I written these words than she proved quite the opposite! Perhaps that will teach me to keep my big mouth shut in future.
- I last read these diaries, or parts of them, some 45 years ago when I was working as a night watchman in Camden Town to earn a bit of holiday money during my student days. I have virtually no memory of this first "reading", but I'm pretty sure I was mostly interested in my own immediate family, with perhaps the hope (unfulfilled) of some revelation of other! In short, I read the thing at a time when I was far more bound up with my own life and attendant angst and not particularly sensitive to the geographical, historical and sociological background to the diaries.
- This time round, I have one foot in retirement and have a very different point of view. I find even Gran's brief description of the weather of interest, as also her accounts of comings and goings, means of transport, etc. At one points she records as a matter of course the fact that she cycled into Halstead (from Castle Hedingham) which must be getting on for a 10 mile round trip. I shouldn't think many of us do that today! Anyway, that's the sort of thing I find fascinating.
I'll be reporting back in a month's time!
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