One young woman's VE Day

Mum was just 19 when VE Day came in 1945. Here she is with her beloved dog Randy, posing in the fields near Nirvana I suspect, She looks almost a child still, with her white ankle socks and hesitant expression. I wonder if war had ended when this was taken. With her warm cardigan this could be early spring, with the war still alive or autumn and a time of peace.

She kept her journal all through the war, as she mentions here. I thought you might enjoy reading her words, and hearing about her feelings on this momentous day; a young woman of quiet life in a suburb of London. Here is what she wrote

8 May 1945

Tuesday

Today is V.E. day. Victory in Europe has come. Today and tomorrow are being held as a national holiday. I am sitting out in the garden at the top of the lawn in my grey skirt and greeny blue blouse, with little Randy lying at my feet, and the time is 4.10.at 3 o’clock we went into the drawing-room to listen to Mr Churchill announcing it over the wireless. Then there was a short service and then they took us all around England, firstly in London, Edinburgh, then Belfast, then to the docks at the Mersey, then to Coventry and Cardiff and Bath to hear eyewitness accounts of the celebrations that were taking place. The wireless is really wonderful in bringing you into touch with all the places. And indeed what a wonderful day this is. We know that it isn’t the end of the war. There is still Japan to be conquered, and when you think of all the misery that has been and is being suffered by our men over there you feel that this is a time of thanksgiving more than rejoicing, for no longer are we subject to air attacks, sirens, doodlebugs, rockets and the misery destruction and suffering that go hand-in-hand with them. German war has always been so much more real to us somehow though, that it is hard to feel that we’re not altogether at peace. I don’t think the crowds will be any more when final victory does come from the description over the wireless. There were masses of people outside Buckingham Palace, and at Whitehall where Mr Churchill in his car on his way to the House of Commons, after making his announcement to us, and [sic] stood up in his car (it was open) and waved his hat to the crowds. The commentators said that police on horseback tried to make their way in front of the crowds but could hardly do it, and at one point it looked as though the people would bodily lift the car, Churchill and all. There are flags hanging out all over Cheam too and loudspeakers going round. I know I have not made many comments in my journal about the war. No doubt I should have done, but somehow when you merely live from day to day and you are only 13 when it starts, and every night week in week out, and year in year out the news bulletins are put on, and you hear of advances here or there and such and such a place captured (which owing to bad geography conveys very little to you) you don’t really take a terribly vital interest in it. You endure the bombs and rockets, and after the first two or three days they become part of life. No doubt if I had been older when it started I would have been more awake to what was going on. The whole of my precious journal has been written during war, and when I look back to the first few entries I see how young 13 and 14 are. Anyway a great deal has happened in one way or another, and now the war with Germany is over. It still seems unbelievable. One day not think what a German victory would have meant. This is indeed a day of deliverance, a day of thanksgiving and rejoicing.

A tribute to Howard

I have been in correspondence for some time now with an Irish writer called Rosemary Raughter. She has been researching my great grandfather Howard's sister, Louie Coade, as she has an interest in women's history and the Irish suffrage movement in which Louie was involved. As her research has progressed she has also found out more about Howard, and has produced a delightful brief account of his life here. My mother and grandmother would have been so pleased to know that he was still thought of and written about. I recall visiting Wexford and Wicklow with Mum in around 1990. We went to the Wexford graveyard to see if we could find Howard's grave but as the light began to fade I felt sure that we would not find him; there seemed to be no order to the graves that I could discern in my hurried survey. As I was walking back to where Mum was waiting, it was as though someone tapped my shoulder, and there, just to my left was his gravestone, one amongst many, indistinguishable from the rest. I collected Mum and brought her to his resting place. I will never forget the way her face crumpled and tears came as she said "oh I so wish I had known my grandfather". A recent entry from her diary talks of having a bureau, which Howard had made when his three girls were young, moved into her bedroom so she could sit at it and write. She talks about

"the picture of my Grandpa which I framed and which stands on top of the bureau. It is an extraordinary thing, but this room had a different atmosphere from any part of the rest of the house and I feel in some silly way that if that picture were taken away it would lose that restful feeling which is just the right atmosphere for writing a journal in. That photo has a feeling about it which is impossible to explain, but somehow it makes me feel there is another presence in the room. I always see it first thing on entering the room, and yet it is well above my eye level and rather hidden in a way on top of the bureau"

This is the image which she had carefully framed and placed in her room as a sort of guardian spirit of her youthful writings.

 

Mum's Diaries

Working with Mum's diaries (I have just begun 1944) is like having a time slip conversation with a very old friend. The person who is talking in these pages is the person I remember her to be; at times caustic and critical of others, at times (and much more often) a woman who cared and felt deeply and did all she could to make other's lives better. She is a mixture of naïve and mature, reflective and dismissive, longing for friends and company, as all only children are, but requiring too much from folk. Mum tended to be an all or nothing person, and that intensity shows in her writings. When she talks of "Mummy" in my minds eye sits my Ganna, who wrote novels and was my rescuer and second mother when we came here "after Daddy died". The diaries are full of family names and stories with which I am deeply familiar.. At times there are quirky little sketches inserted, like this, of her new coat or quick drawings of their new kitten George.

But mostly she records her thoughts about life, and events and happenings and family interactions. I wrote earlier of Nirvana, the holiday cottage which belonged to her Aunts, Connie and Harry. These folk are so familiar to me, I met them as a tiny child, we lived in their house (without them - we inherited it) when we moved to Hastings after my Dad died, they are part of the folklore of my childhood, and at times took on an almost incantatory presence for me, I could feel my molecules mingling with theirs. Numerous of those little incidents are recorded here, and were part of my childhood's pattern. I find myself at times almost alive in these recountings of hers, because they were the foundation of our life together

Ten years

Ten years ago today my dear little Mum left this earth. This morning Jen and I sat together in my garden and raised a cup of tea in her memory. We both feel grateful to have had her in our lives. She was a wonderful Mum, though not always an easy person, and was a delightful Gran to Jen, known always as Granny Rose, because her name was Rosemary. I printed out a couple of extracts from her diaries for Jen, just to bring her close again and we sat crocheting and knitting and drinking tea, exactly the sort of thing Mum would have shared with us had she been here.

Mum with her Mum, my Ganna

Mum and Dad in their courting days

Mum and Jen in 2003

So, a little bit of that extract which is so exactly Mum, with her ability to recall conversations in detail and her tendency to not "suffer fools gladly" - she could be a harsh judge of folk at times, yet unshakably kind and generous with most. She was 16 when she wrote this in 1942

"To change from the sublime to the ridiculous Mrs Lambert was talking to Mummy over the fence the other day and she has for some time wanted to find out if Mummy has registered to find out her age. She is in collusion with Mrs Harpur. Mrs L says that she has registered which is a lie because for one thing she is no more 42 than I am, for another she told Daddy the day after that she hadn’t registered because it was so full and would she be out to jail and then about 3 weeks after told Mummy that she had gone in there and told the woman that she wouldn’t wait, and of course the woman obeyed her. There’s swank for you! Anyway I am leaving my story. She suddenly said to Mummy “My dear I have my calling up papers, have you yours?”. Whereupon Mummy said “No”. Actually she hasn’t got to register until next month but she wasn’t going to give anything away to Ruby to Mrs Harpur to Cheam. Then the fair lady said “Ah I know why you haven’t got them, because you haven’t registered – have you registered?” This was all done in a high pitched excited voice and is very rude because it is the equivalent of asking a person their age which isn’t usually supposed to be in the best of taste. So truth telling Mummy said “No” and quickly added “not for firewatching” Mrs L “But my dear I don’t mean firewatching I mean the ordinary registration” so Mum said “Oh yes Mrs Lambert” whereupon a steady gaze ensued. Where Mrs L goes wrong is that she makes such silly mistakes like saying that she had all her calling up papers when she couldn’t have even registered for firewatching as it hasn’t come in. Some women are silly."

We enjoyed that

The gender fluid cow

As our isolation and social distancing settles in we are keeping ourselves occupied in a variety of ways. I am taking great delight in returning to my Mum's diaries, transcribing them little by little each day and wishing she could know how much they are contributing to my touch typing skills. As I follow her adventures I occasionally come across mention of letters written to her beloved "Mummy". You can imagine my delight when I investigate one of the many old suitcases that I have kept,

and find each of those letters carefully tucked away. Little did her 14 year old self think that her daughter would be reading them all these years later.

Letter from Sept 1939

So, it is 1940, she is staying with her beloved Aunt Connie and her companion Harry out at Nirvana, by Iden lock during a break from school

Connie and Harry at the gate of Nirvana

Harry and Connie pedalling across the fields

Her life is full of very simple pleasures; taking their dog Benjy for walks, picking bluebells, going to collect the milk from the nearby farm, wrapping 5 dozen eggs in paper to take back to Hastings for storage in "waterglass", and feeding one of the local cows "8 or 9 basins full of lovely grass". Having spent the day doing this, much to the cow's delight, she then goes for an evening walk across the fields. The cow, obviously anticipating more spoiling, comes ambling up for more grass. In her letter home she describes the scene

"… he stalked across about half the field to meet me. I showed him that my hands were empty and she put down her head as tho' to eat grass and butted me (don’t laugh). I was scared stiff and dashed nearly the length of the field back to Nirvana. She followed but saw I was too fast for her. I think it was a dirty trick after my feeding her all day with sweat upon the brow."

You will notice, however, that the "cow" changes sex in the extract, in fact, she changes sex several times during the recounting of the tale. Obviously my grandmother, in a reply that I don't have, commented. In the following letter, a few days later, Mum elaborates, noting that

"The “sack” of the cow was feminine but I think it must have had a bit of bull in it to want to butt me."

Obviously in Mum's world feminine was good, udders were best not mentioned and masculine was likely to misbehave!

Here she is the following year aged 15 in her garden in Cheam, with her much loved cat Patsy - who despite the name was male!!

Treasure for the New Year

Happy New Year to you dear readers, I hope your Christmases were good and that your year has started with all hope and happy expectation. Mine, of course, has started with the recognition that this will be my first full year of retirement and that I'd better get busy with all those projects I mentioned!

So, what is this New Year treasure? It is my Mum's diaries kept, with a few breaks (or perhaps lost volumes), from the age of 11 (1937) all the way through to when she was 80 and had the fall that was to mark her long slow decline towards the end of her life.

They truly are treasure, in large part because they are hers and connect me to her and to our family in such an intimate way. She grew up in middle class suburban Cheam, until they moved back to Hastings when she was 21. I know so many of the names and places that she describes from her own stories of childhood; I can hear her voice filling in additional details and feel her personality in what she relates here.

The first part of the collection is a lovely set of Lilley and Skinners (The Fashion Shoe Shop, 356-360 Oxford Street London) school-girl's diaries (and one schoolboy's). There are 6 of them, starting in 1937, so cover the period when war starts, through to 1942. My grandfather worked as a bookkeeper at L&S, travelling up to London and back by train every day, and working in a dingy basement. I wonder if he ever ventured down to the "buried street" mentioned here and here. 

Each diary has a set of pages at the beginning with "much useful information and many tables helpful for her work and play" including the Rugby Football results for the national teams, books to read, foreign phrases in common use and mensuration formulae, which I have to confess I briefly misread in the index, until I realised the unlikelihood of my misreading! 

I was pleased to note in suggested careers for women that, as well as teaching, nursing and domestic science, we could also embark on industrial welfare (if trained and competent), become pharmaceutical chemists, barristers or solicitors and even apply to the Institute of Civil Engineers, although a note here warns that "practical work is a real difficulty" and "women find posts more easily on the secretarial and commercial sides"

They all have a map of the British Empire at the back (of course)

And each week has a little illustration at bottom right, along with a small paragraph explaining the image. 1938's theme obviously relates to the British constitution so for the last week of November we have The Lobby of the House of Commons and explanation of the cry "who goes home?"

I have, as you can see, started at the beginning, the image above being from November 1938, where you can see her interest in school seemed to be restricted to music (she later went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music), dancing and, above all else, food - and this is before the war and rationing. I remember her stories of "starving" during the war and how cross she was that her father wouldn't sacrifice his precious delphiniums to grow vegetables to feed them. She has just started at a new school in September of this year, so perhaps the food was so much better than in her previous school that it merited detailed reporting.

In 1941 however, she also begins "My Journal" as series of notebooks that run from June 1941 to July 1953. These are, as their title suggest, more of a journal and contain all sorts of interesting detail of the life of a young woman growing through her teenage years into her mid twenties. They end on a very poignant note when her beloved dog Randy died. There follows a gap of four years then they resume, but once again in the more restricted form of week to a spread diaries and pocket diaries, and continue right through to 2006, a span of 69 years.

This is the project that I have been waiting to do for as long as I have known that I have this wonderful collection, which is quite a long time. I am nearing the end of 1938, the only mention of the impending war so far is that she was fitted for a gas mask in late September, but no comment as to why. I shall be transcribing for some while I rather think, and treasuring every moment of time spent with her.

Today I found my childhood in a suitcase

It was all here

These beautiful suitcases contain a myriad of family memories. I feel privileged to own them, and pay tribute to my dear little Mum, who treasured them herself all these years.







I have always had them in the back of my awareness, part of my childhood's fabric. I peered into them when I was much younger, but in recent years, as she declined, it seemed an intrusion on her privacy, so fragile she was, yet enduring.


I wept with relief to find them intact, such poignant things

There are sad things, to do with my father's death, but also happy things like this!

The Beatles circa 1964 - by me - aged 3!

And wonderful things like Mum's diaries kept during the war 1940-1947.

I am almost afraid to read them - she is still so close.