It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon .........

 

…. was the way Garrison Keillor began each Lake Wobegon segment in his, “A Prairie Home Companion” radio show. Everyone knows everyone in Lake Wobegon and all the rules. Lutherans drive Fords bought from Bunsen Motors, Catholics purchase their Chevys from Krebsbach Chevrolet, everyone has lunch at the Sidetrack Tap and the Statue of the Unknown Norwegian (so called because he left before the sculptor got round to asking him his name) is the high point of Main Street.

Since lock down began, I could have started most of my blogs with the same phrase. “It’s been a quiet week in Loudham ….” On the whole, this has been true. The same things have happened in roughly the same order. Planting, watering, weeding, painting, re-potting, bread making, cooking, home schooling, feeding the chickens, mowing, maintaining the empire of compost bins, saying hello to delivery people, chatting to friends and neighbours at a safe distance etc.

Dear readers, be assured that what you read here every week is no exaggeration. I don’t make things up to entertain you and, it turns out, this is because I don’t have to. Recent excitements have included being joined by an enormous stag beetle as I drifted off to sleep (it was nesting in my hair), being bitten by a tortoise and losing tiny amounts of blood due to picking 13lb of gooseberries from a particularly thorny bush.

Last Thursday, however, something really unexpected and out of the usual run of things occurred. Friends and acquaintances know that I am not a cat person. I am scared of them, hate the thought of their claws being stuck into me and leap up into the air if one comes into the room. The children asked if they could have a kitten, once, years ago and have never asked again. Chickens, yes. Quails, absolutely fine. Cats, nope!

Opening our garage door, I was confronted by a tiny bundle of grey fur with huge blue eyes. My husband scooped it up and we gazed at it in wonder. Just at the moment, the three children cycled on to the drive after a long bike ride. What parents can resist three pairs of pleading eyes and three voices crying, “Can we keep it? Please, please, please?”

Not us, it turns out. We released the kitten who immediately ran to the back of the garage. We spent the rest of the day googling cat-related stuff and applying for advice to our feline-loving friends Jenny and Danni. Armed with two litter boxes and various cat accessories, Operation Kitten began. Parented by two feral farm cats, the little fur ball was not being very well looked after. It took my husband and daughter four long hours to extract her from the very corner of the garage.

That was a week ago. It has not been a quiet week in Loudham. We’ve discovered that tiny kittens need to have their bottoms gently rubbed with a wet flannel to encourage them to do a number two. This my daughter has happily done. We’ve found that Misty loves shoes and feet, and I’ve had to stay calm as she gently nibbles my toes. I’ve picked her up, cuddled and stroked her. I’m still a bit scared of her claws.

Friends have expressed disbelief at the news. “You? With a cat? You’re kidding!” I’ve surprised myself.

Just seven days ago, if you’d asked me if I would ever have a cat in the house, I’d have given you a firm negative. Things change so quickly, hearts expand to welcome in a new family member and even an old girl set in her ways like me is learning to love a cute, cuddly little kitten.

Will next week be a quiet week in Loudham? I doubt it. I’ll keep you posted.

From superhero to sadness and back again

Yesterday morning, I was driving up Chapel Lane towards the Hill. I was on the regular trek to buy food for my elderly parents, my elderly mother in law and husband and our family. I slowed down as I noticed a mother and a little boy walking along the road. He was stumping along in a determined fashion and as I went past, I noticed he was wearing a superhero mask. His stance, his gait and his age (around three) all screamed, “I am a superhero today! I have magical powers. There are no limits to my world.”

Do you remember feeling like that? We probably all went through that phase and then life slowly taught us that actually our world is limited and that pushing the boundaries and following our dreams is hard and sometimes painful.

Continuing on to the Hill, I started thinking how life goes from one phase to another and how sometimes, it overlaps so that you’re living in what feel like a number of different dimensions.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was trying to reason with my own three-year old son. I would gently wake him from his nap and try to get him out to the car to pick up his older brother from school. This never went well. Bribery didn’t do it, making it into a game was laughed off and even logic (which, eleven years on works a treat with him) was a no go. The only way I could ensure a relatively smooth transfer from house to car was by agreeing to supply him with the correct clothing. If it was cold and rainy outside, he would put together an outfit of shorts, a sun hat and wellies. If, however, we were experiencing a warmer spell, he would call for his winter coat and woolly hat. This made me the laughing stock of the mothers at school. I was prepared to go along with it, however, as it did what was needed, ie got us from A to B.

Back then, my parents were still living eighty-five miles away in their house, completely independent and in excellent health. I was devoting most of my attention to keeping three children and myself alive while trying to work from home. 

Last year, due to ill-health and increasing frailty with both parents, we moved them up here, five minutes away. Last March, they were still pretty perky. Yesterday, I walked in with the shopping to find Dad sitting on the sofa and Mum lying down on the bed. Of late, they’ve been sitting outside in the garden on their new garden furniture, reading their books and enjoying a cup of tea and a shortbread finger. It’s easy, with the sunlight streaming down and the doves cooing in the background, to forget how old they are and how frail.

It felt like a shock. From a little boy with a mask to an elderly man in a cardigan on the sofa telling me he’s not as strong as he used to be (he’s 94). I went to lots of trouble to sort them both out with hearing aids when they moved. They never wear them. I have to shout at the top of my voice to make myself understood, but according to Dad, his hearing is still very good.

“I’ve brought you some cake!” I bellowed. Dad cupped his ear with his hand.

“What’s that?”

“CAKE! I’VE BROUGHT SOME CAKE!”

His eyes lit up. He loves the cake. I went through each type and he beamed. It’s so easy to make him happy.

Just then, Mum shuffled through from the bedroom. I told her about the cake. Dad laughed and wagged his finger at me.

“You never told me we had cake!” His face was wreathed in smiles, delighted at catching me out. The Alzheimer’s is definitely getting worse. I’ve learned how to manage it now, just as I learned how to keep my toddler happy.

“Well, we have. Carrot with ginger and some lovely cheesecake for your pudding.”

Coffee made and cake served, I fed the tortoise, did the washing up and made sure they had something ready for dinner. Then it was back home to make everyone’s day by telling them about the cheesecake I’d bought (it was Wednesday, after all) and to don my own superhero mask and start writing.

Yesterday felt as though lots of my phases were coming together. The children dress themselves these days and it’s been a long, long time since one of them threw themselves on the ground and screamed. My parents have gone from independence to relatively contented dependence.

I’ve changed so much in the fourteen years since we moved to Suffolk. I look back at the optimistic girl who left everything behind to make a new life and smile wryly at her unquenchable belief that all would be well. Something I couldn’t have predicted is that one day I would put on my own superhero mask every day as I sat down at the computer to write.

I never did take the risk of having dreams or following them. That was far too dangerous. But for the last few months, I’ve been putting that mask on and whispering to myself, “I am a superhero today! I have magical powers. There are no limits to my world.”

Oh Schitt

I’ve always been drawn to a certain type of comedy. I like quirky characters, slow burn plot development and wit. One of my favourite sayings ever comes from one of the writers of “Seinfeld”. He said their credo on the show was “no hugging, no learning.” I liked that. Stuff happened (not much of it, admittedly) and no-one ever had a neat, end of show epiphany as a result.

The premise of the dysfunctional family has been at the heart of some of the most successful comedies ever. From Steptoe and Son to Fawlty Towers (I’m counting Polly and Manuel as part of the family), from The Simpsons to Arrested Development, from Spaced to Black Books, the idea of a group of people living together and their subsequent adventures has provided a rich seam of comedy for writers.

Laughter has been in fairly short supply in 2020. Fear, anxiety and apprehension have been bedfellows for most of us in the last few months. I came across this Jewish proverb recently: “As soap is to the body, so laughter is to the soul.” I like that. Watching the news has been a sobering experience, worse than usual if you watched “Newsnight” last night, but I’d have gone crazy if I hadn’t countered it all with a good dose of humour.

Which leads me rather neatly on to one of the best discoveries I’ve made all year. “Schitt’s Creek” is a Canadian sitcom about the Rose family. Paterfamilias Johnny made his fortune with a string of video stores, his wife Moira is a fading soap star and their grown-up children, David and Alexis are a pair of spoilt, entitled snobs. The story starts with a ring at the door of their gilded mansion and the discovery that their business manager has been defrauding them. They’ve got an hour to pack up and get out. Their sole remaining asset is a back of beyond town which they bought for their son as a joke years ago…..

As the Roses arrive in town on the bus, the full horror of their situation bursts upon them. They own the Schitt’s Creek Motel, so they can stay there free, but to a family used to palatial luxury and lots of servants, two shabby adjoining rooms in a provincial motel is a shocking come-down. Naturally, things don’t go too well in the first series, giving the writers the opportunity to introduce a small but impressive cast of characters and set the family up for absolutely no hugging, but a whole lot of learning.

“Schitt’s Creek” makes me laugh my head off while applauding the quality of the writing. As far as I’m concerned, it deserves every award going. By Series 6, Johnny is still the baffled straight man to ludicrous mayor Roland Schitt, but has got to know his family much better and discovered his kind and compassionate side. Moira is still an over-emoting drama queen with a wall of wigs, each with a name, but she shows the odd chink of humanity. David is still a posturing neat freak, but he’s learned that he might just be worthy of love. Alexis is still moderately self-obsessed, but she’s learned that in order to find real love, you need to be selfless.

“Schitt’s Creek” is a family affair. It’s written by father and son team Eugene and Dan Levy, who play Johnny and David. Twyla, the waitress at the café is Sarah Levy, Dan’s sister. Deb Devine, Dan and Sarah’s mother and Eugene’s wife, is the creative consultant on the show. Fans of Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries (Best in Show, A Mighty Wind etc) will recognise Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara as a well-established humorous double act.

When thinking about the show, Dan Levy asked himself the question, “Would the Kardashians still be the Kardashians without their money?” and “Schitt’s Creek” was the result. It’s lifted my spirits no end this year and I am rationing myself through Series 6, although the temptation to binge is huge.

Different things make us all laugh, but what we can probably all agree on at the moment is that humour, warm-heartedness and community spirit are more important than ever. You’ll find all of those things in, “Schitt’s Creek” if you decide to give it a go.

Let me know what you think.

Nine (and very nearly a half) weeks

We’re over halfway through week nine of lock down. At the beginning of all this, my search history reflected what was going on in my life, and presumably, lots of other people’s too. “Where can I buy strong bread flour?” (Nowhere, was the answer, but my husband discovered that 00 pizza flour made an acceptable substitute). “Where can I buy yeast?” (Again, nowhere, so I begged and borrowed some from friends and worked my way through it, occasionally making soda bread in desperation until it started appearing in the shops again). “What are the symptoms of Covid-19?” (With three children, a husband and two elderly and extremely vulnerable parents, that was a worry. So far, so good, thank God.)

As time went on and nearly all my paid work dried up, the other half of my brain, the creative half which is the bit that started this blog in the first place, suddenly realised that it was time to take some of the stuff that had been knocking about in the lobe marked, “big words and made up stories” and actually write some of it down. My search history reflects this. By week two of lock down, a random sample of my google searches were, “Common 18^th Century Hertfordshire Surnames,” “Medicinal Herbs in the 18^th Century” and “Where is Meryton Supposed to be in Pride and Prejudice?” My reading pile doubled in size and started taking on a rather Austen-esque flavour. Longbourn by Jo Baker, Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope, Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid and Emma by Alexander McCall Smith, plus surely the greatest novel ever written, Pride and Prejudice, were my preferred bedtime reading. I found myself writing a book of short stories, based on minor characters in Pride and Prejudice. It’s nearly done. I’ll keep you posted on progress.

Hard on the heels of this new creation, my search history changed yet again. It was becoming clear that grey roots, shaggy hair and wispy layers were going to be a part of our lives for quite some time to come. “How do I cut my own fringe?” was my next question. Back came the answer, “By letting your eleven-year old daughter loose with the kitchen scissors.”

I wouldn’t want you to think that I’ve spent my entire lock down gazing at my hair and googling herbal remedies. There was a flurry of Antarctica-based research a couple of weeks ago due to my daughter’s Year 6 topic. I am now an expert on Shackleton and all his expeditions. 

With social distancing really beginning to bite, my search history reflected new ways to communicate. “How do I set up a Zoom account?” How does Microsoft Teams work?” and “How do I read a book on Audible?” were questions I was asking myself. Never the greatest of technical whizzes, I have got to grips with some new platforms even if I haven’t worked out how to change my background.

With bread proving happily under a tea towel, my blackcurrant gin mellowing nicely in bottles under the stairs and my fringe all sorted, my next project took shape. I write for the ACW’s blog More Than Writers once a month. In April, I wrote a jokey piece about an imaginary lifestyle blogger and writer called Isabella M Smugge (I Am Smug – get it?) which caused much mirth. The next month, I wrote a much more serious piece but used Ms Smugge again for comic effect. The comments were complimentary and several people said they’d like to see a book about her. Guess what?

My google searches are now along the lines of, “Common Suffolk Surnames”, “Posh Girls’ Names” and “Top Five British Bloggers.” I’ve written a book proposal, a story arc and four and a half chapters. As you’ll see from my blog heading, my earliest dream was to be a writer. I crushed that dream and put it away somewhere safe, but now it’s back. My favourite writers are those who create whole new worlds, and Isabella’s world is taking shape.

Let’s not run before we can walk, but in a few months’ time, I really hope that my google search history will say things like, “What should I wear on the red carpet?” “What is the best answer to where do you get your ideas?” and “How do I organise a book launch?”

Dear readers, you saw it here first. It’s been nine (and very nearly a half) weeks and Ruth the blogger is morphing into Ruth the novelist.

Feels pretty good.

I now declare this book open

If you’d told me at the end of last year that come May 2020, I would regularly hurl myself into the path of traffic while wearing a snazzy face mask, I would have laughed in, or near your face. Had you predicted that my last major social event would be a trip to Southampton to see my sister and her family while struggling with a cold of epic proportions, I would have been surprised.

Since then, everything has changed. Men are sporting magnificent beards while women display a scattering of what my hairdresser used to call, “Nature’s Highlights”. Home barbering is now a thing. Yesterday afternoon, my eleven-year old daughter trimmed my fringe and my world makes sense again.

Since lock down, I’ve become a more involved member of the ACW, a supportive and fabulous writers’ group, as well as taking my first steps in book reviewing. For me, there is nothing to compare to the smell and the feel of a new book, its pages as yet unread, its secrets still to be unlocked.

A few weeks ago, I was very excited to be asked to be part of my friend Fran Hill’s virtual launch team. Fran now has two actual books under her belt. She is a Proper Writer, as we unpublished folk say. For this reason alone, I curtseyed low when first we met, full of respect and admiration for anyone who could write lots of words in one go, put them together and turn them into something which an actual publisher would publish so that people could buy it in bookshops.

Pre Covid-19, Fran and her publisher planned a book launch for Thursday 21^st May. That’s today. In an alternative universe, people would have sipped Prosecco, nibbled canapes and stood around saying nice things. Fran would have said a few well-chosen words, everyone present would have clapped and had another flute of fizz before buying her book and heading home.

Nothing daunted by the lack of a government announcement confirming that writers were key workers and could therefore meet together in small, excitable groups, Fran started organising a virtual book launch. And this is where we all come in.

“Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean?” is out today. Yes, TODAY! A hilarious, warm and touching memoir of an English teacher’s year at a secondary school, it is the ideal read for lock down. Having taught for 16 years and now an English tutor, Fran really knows her stuff. The narrator of her memoir, “Miss”, has a fondness for Baileys, is breaking out in menopausal spots and has a love-hate relationship with her bathroom mirror and scales who conspire to tell her uncomfortable truths.

Fran is having her virtual book launch on Facebook and you can join her, live, from 8.00 tonight by clicking here: https://www.facebook.com/events/263230455056350/

Bring your own drinks and nibbles. Lie on your bed in pyjamas and slippers if you like, or dress yourself up to the nines. Fran won’t mind what you look like, she’ll just be glad you came.

You can find out more about Fran and her work by clicking here: https://www.facebook.com/Fran-Hill-Writer-430140043700388

You can snag your very own copy of , “Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean?” by clicking on any of these links: https://spckpublishing.co.uk/miss-what-does-incomprehensible-mean, https://www.hive.co.uk/, https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/search/?keyword=miss,+what+does+incomprehensible+mean or 

 http://www.warwickbooks.net/

Happy reading, everyone.

A quick spin around the ingredients, Clive

I’m the proud owner of three battered cookery books which I count as amongst my most precious possessions. One of them is signed by the author. They’re cookery books, but they are also beautifully written statements of intent. In their own way, they started a revolution. Their author was unlike anyone who had ever gone before, and I’d contend that no-one since has ever been quite like him.

And that author is? The great Keith Floyd.

 Let me take you back to April 1986. Aged 19, I had just started a new job at Devon Life magazine, based in Exeter where I then lived. I was an Advertising Sales Executive, earning the princely sum of £5,000 per year. My job was to sell adverts in our glossy magazine, chase copy and occasionally design adverts. Quite soon, it was realised that I was rather good at talking restauranteurs into buying space and I became responsible for “Wine and Dine.”

The further west you went in the West Country, the quieter and sleepier it got. Somerset and Avon had Bristol, from whence came Bristol Illustrated, the fun and funky magazine in our group. Dorset seemed to have nodded off shortly after the Tolpuddle Martyrs left for Australia and never woken up. Cornwall was all about tourism, surfing and fishing. This left Devon, a place I loved and still do.

In the mid-80s, it was home to three award-winning and ground-breaking restaurants. The Carved Angel in Dartmouth was run by Joyce Molyneux, one of the first women to win a Michelin star. Sonia Stevenson cooked at The Horn of Plenty at Gulworthy in West Devon, on the Devon and Cornwall border. Gidleigh Park in Chagford, on the edge of Dartmoor National Park was a byword for luxury and cutting-edge cuisine.

Over the border, Rick Stein was making a name for himself at the Seafood Restaurant in Padstow. I had plenty of restaurants and pubs to ring and even got to write reviews of some of them. However, the name on everyone’s lips in 1986 was Keith Floyd, the talented cook who was taking TV by storm.

Our regional TV station was TSW. It gave us all the local news and weather, plus Gus Honeybun, a large rabbit who would deliver the requisite number of bunny hops to anyone who wrote in asking for a birthday dedication. Truly, they were simpler times. Big news in the office, however, was not Gus and his bunny hops, but a new programme starring one of our region’s most talented cooks. A Somerset boy who’d run a number of bistros and restaurants in Bristol, Floyd burst on to the scene with, “Floyd on Fish”, all set in the West Country. Nowadays, it’s hard to get across just what a revelation the programme was. An enthusiastic, arm waving cook who addressed the camera man by name and ordered him about, who abused his producer and who was clearly passionate about fresh fish was not something the British public were used to seeing.

In the Devon Life office, we were ecstatic. We claimed Floyd as one of our own. Each week, we’d discuss the programme in minute detail. Floyd was generous to other West Country cooks. One segment featured Sonia Stevenson at the Horn of Plenty, another Rick Stein in his kitchen (“Rick, dear boy.”)

I bought Floyd on Fish which quickly became one of my very favourite books. It still is. Great illustrations, simple instructions and most of all, an assumption right from the start that the reader wants to learn and to use fresh ingredients. When Floyd came to the Barnfield Theatre next door to the office on his tour, I was there in the audience drinking it in. He was brilliant.

Floyd on France was just as good. A typical recipe reads: “Cookery writers and chefs of yesterday terrified the living daylights out of people with their old wives’ tales about egg liaison sauces. Ignore all this and follow me.” I did.

When Floyd bought the Malsters’ Arms in Tuckenhay, it fell to me to ring him up once a month to encourage him to advertise in our pages. He was always very friendly, as was Rick Stein who became another customer. In 1990, I bought A Feast of Floyd which I would read from cover to cover, regularly. These books stood out for me, not only because of the brilliant recipes and reassuring tone, but because of the beautiful, lyrical writing in between. Even now, I can close my eyes and recall whole phrases. “Low tide at Cancale and the beach stretches far to the Brittany horizon. The sun has resigned, washed out by the early evening grey.” Any one of Floyd’s books weaves the recipes together with mellifluous descriptive prose.

Time went on. I left Devon Life and went to run a restaurant. I left Devon in 1993 and my books travelled up to Essex. We moved to Suffolk in 2006 and they took up residence in the book shelves in the dining room. Floyd’s recipe for fish paella was the basis on which we started our Spanish catering company. We turned to his cook books on a regular basis, but life took over, and I rarely managed to watch him on TV.

When he died in 2009, he was about to watch a documentary, “Keith Meets Keith” made by Keith Allen. I never did get round to watching it, but last week, I did.

It was painful viewing. That energetic, bombastic, irreverent cook had become a tired, washed out man in poor health, but still with flashes of the old brilliance. The saddest part for me was the slow descent into alcohol-fuelled anger at dinner, when his long-estranged daughter whispered, “Please, Dad, don’t.” Anyone who has loved an addict will recognise that vain hope that perhaps, just perhaps, this time it will be different. Sadly, it rarely is.

I almost wished I hadn’t seen it, but just the same, today, while I watched him visit Vietnam for “Far Flung Floyd”, I saw again that reverence for food and its preparation, that deep respect for those who cook it and the love of the new and the unfamiliar. In his three volumes of autobiography, there are clues to his mercurial lifestyle and personality. His Uncle Ken, who no-one could ever tame, his aunt who killed herself after concealing great unhappiness, his own deep-down loneliness and depression. It was all there, for anyone to see if they dug deep enough, but the great majority of his output was joyful, irreverent and life-changing.

I know a number of great cooks who say that Floyd was the one who started them off. His legacy (terrible word) lives on. For me, my treasured books are returned to again and again, full of the beautiful prose and fail-safe recipes of one of the greatest cooks and showmen who ever lived.

God bless him.

Digging for Victory

Yesterday morning, enjoying a restorative cup of tea after doing the daily mountain of washing up with the partner of all my joys and sorrows, he enquired what I was writing about this week. “Floyd, Stein and all those chefs I used to know,” I replied. 

“But it’s VE Day on Friday – what about that?” Quick as a wink, I changed horses in mid-stream, like a young gazelle leaping from crag to crag, very nearly tripping myself up on the similes and metaphors piling up all around me.

VE Day is far too important a milestone to ignore. I’ve bumped the chefs to next week.

My esteemed spouse is a chemist by profession, but having spent the last 26 years manacled to me, quite a bit of my writing know-how has rubbed off.

“How about comparing World War Two to lock down?” he enquired, drying up a plate.

“On it!”

“You could talk about the similarities between then and now. You know, digging for victory and all that.”

“Yes, I could! Good thinking.”

Covid-19 has put paid to national plans to celebrate VE Day, but tomorrow is still going to be a big day. Locally, both Pettistree and Wickham Market have plans to decorate and celebrate. Our resident bagpiper, Jim, will be marching up The Street playing (probably in shorts, displaying his handsomely bronzed limbs) and many of us will decorate our houses and gardens. Even in these difficult times, we can all pull together. Perhaps especially now.

Since this all began, there have been acres of newsprint devoted to the similarities between the war and the pandemic. Loss, fear of the unknown, a deadly killer and heroes emerging to keep us all safe. There’s been an outpouring of creativity, too, people writing songs, poetry, learning new skills in their enforced quarantine.

Many of us have started digging for victory. A number of our friends locally have dug up parts of their lawn and started putting in potatoes, carrots, beans, cauliflowers, courgettes, tomatoes and suchlike, all of which grow beautifully in our light Suffolk soil. Waste is right down. Every scrap of our household waste (banana skins, orange peel, eggshells, teabags etc) goes into our new expanded empire of compost bins along with grass cuttings and the resulting compost will help our veg to grow.

There is a sense of everyone pulling together in our communities. I am a member of the Pettistree WhatsApp group which is full of helpful suggestions, offers to go shopping, beautiful pictures and inspiring words. One of our number has gone out and bulk bought flags and bunting so that we can all decorate our houses and gardens tomorrow. A lady halfway down the High Street in Wickham Market who has been growing and selling plants for twenty years has made over £400 so far this year which she is splitting between Marie Curie and the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. As we chatted at a safe distance yesterday, she told me how lovely it was that she was meeting so many new people.

I was born to relatively old parents for the time (36 and 40) in 1966. There were still bomb sites all over London, gaps in terraced houses and a very real sense that the war wasn’t that long ago. Both my parents lived through it as children and young people. My mum told a story about their precious egg ration which sounded like something from another culture at the time, but now makes a lot more sense.

Mum lived with her mother in the East End of Glasgow. Her father was a Captain in the Merchant Navy so was away much of the time. Thursday was the day that they received one precious fresh egg on their rations and Thursday team time was looked forward to all week. The egg was gently frying on the stove and Mum (aged about 11) left the kitchen to go and lay the table. Suddenly, there was an almighty crash and the house shook. She ran back into the kitchen to find that the ceiling had collapsed, weakened by the nightly bombardment. You or I would be upset about the state of the kitchen, but the first thing out of my grandmother’s mouth was: “Jean! The egg!! Is it all right?” It was duly extracted from the mess, dusted off and enjoyed before the task of tidying up began.

Before the pandemic, I’ll be honest. I was careless. I didn’t value what I had as much as I should have. I didn’t waste food and I wasn’t profligate with money (chance would be a fine thing), but I wasn’t as careful as I might have been. Since lock down, we have been recycling, re-purposing and re-using like mad. And quite right too. The wartime spirit of, “make do and mend”, “dig for victory” and “lend a hand on the land” is back with us, today, in 2020.

So many gave so much to buy our freedom. VE Day is important every year, but perhaps this year, even more so. I will certainly be thinking of all those who bravely sacrificed their lives so that I could live in liberty and it seems to me that it would be only respectful to continue growing fruit and veg, cutting right down on waste and building on community spirit long after the pandemic is over.

 Whatever you’re doing tomorrow, join me in stopping to think a while on what they gave for us, and what we in turn can do for our descendants.