Does anyone care about my jaw any more? Do I, even?

Not really. These prickly wire appliances in my mouth? They barely even attract my attention. The only thing worth reading, hearing and knowing about now is Covid-19. But I’m glad that my accident made me re-start this blog, because it’s caused me to reflect more deeply on the worldwide crisis which followed my own little personal emergency. I’m sure I’m not alone in this — a neighbor told me last week that he was now keeping a journal for the first time in his life. I suppose we all feel that we are living in a profound historical moment which we need to process in the present, and wish to remember in the future.

I adore the books which came out of the WWII Mass Observation Project, which invited British civilians to record their wartime experiences. I’ve read a number of these compilations, but the best were written by a Lancashire housewife named Nella Last. How I adore Nella!  You would too — she is so brave, so quick and funny, and so full of pungent, prickly analysis of the humans around her, including her rather unsatisfactory husband! I appreciate that her typically flawed human nature comes through, as it makes everything else she says ring even more true.

If anyone were to ever read these pages in a day to come, and think ‘my, that’s what it was like,’ as I did with Nella’s words, it would be a great honor!

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