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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