WARTIME CHRISTMAS

This is just a quick message to wish a Happy Christmas to all my lovely blog followers.

I can’t believe another year has nearly gone by. It’s been an up and down year for me. I signed my new amazing book contract with Headline Books in the early part of the year. Then almost immediately after that my mother died. We had looked after her for eleven years so it was a terrible sadness for us, and left a big hole in our lives.

It took me a while to be able to get back to writing, but now I’m glad to report that my latest contracted novel, the fifth in my LAVENDER ROAD series, is coming along well.

And once again I can’t help comparing what life was like at Christmas in London during the war years.

In 1942 there were very few fresh turkeys or chickens to be had for love, money, or food coupons! And of course there were no frozen ones either. In my next novel, LONDON CALLING, which is being published in February, one of my characters preserves a gifted turkey in salt ready for Christmas Day!

The best most people could manage for their festive lunch was a chicken and dumpling pie. Sugar, suet and dried fruit was in short supply too, so Christmas puddings were either very small or non existent.

Toy shops were pretty much bare of everything and fathers found themselves making toys and/or dolls from salvaged bits and pieces. One old lady I spoke to told me of a treasured necklace she had been given by her fiancé made from cherry stones!

Crackers and paper hats were often made out of newspaper, and if you fancied a tipple, the likelihood was that your local pub would have asked you to bring your own glass!

The British government wanted people to give each other War Bond savings vouchers as gifts and the Red Cross encouraged people to ‘Adopt a Prisoner of War’ (rather in the same way as people sponsor endangered wild animals nowadays!)

This year, in the UK alone, millions have already been spent on gifts for pets. In 1942 it was illegal even to put breadcrumbs out for the birds.

So there you go – enjoy the festivities, and remember to relish your freedom, your food and your gifts – and don’t forget to raise a glass to all the stalwart souls (like my characters in LAVENDER ROAD) of 1939 – 1945 who made it possible!!

 

*Helen Carey’s new novel LONDON CALLING will be published by Headline on 25th February 2016. It is now available for pre-order on Amazon.*

Time flies?

Nearly everyone I meet at the moment comments on how quickly this year has gone. At first I thought it was an age thing. But then my teenage niece (great niece actually, but I don’t dwell on that!) said the same thing. The old adage says that time flies when you are enjoying yourself. In that case, everyone I know must be having a very jolly time.

And then I began to wonder if people felt the same sense of time passing too fast during the Second World War. But I can find no mention of it in wartime diaries or letters. On the contrary, there are lots of comments about how slowly everything was progressing; the interminable Blitz, the endless backwards and forwards of the North African campaign, the pitifully slow Allied crawl up through Italy, and the long wait for the invasion of France.

If the old adage is right then the obvious conclusion is that people were not enjoying themselves. But, however odd it may seem, much of the evidence says they were.

Indeed many of the people I have talked to during my research look back on the war years with fondness and a sense of nostalgia. Yes, unbearably awful things happened, friends and family were lost, people suffered horrendous ordeals, privation and tragedy, but on the other side of the coin there was a sense of comradeship, both on the home front and on the battlefield, of being in it together. There was also a life affirming sense of surviving difficult odds, and of playing a part in a great struggle for justice and freedom. A Hungarian doctor attending survivors of the bombing of the Bank underground shelter said afterwards, ‘If Hitler could have been there for five minutes with me, he would have finished this war. He would have realised that he has got to take every Englishman and twist him by the neck – otherwise he cannot win.’ Another old Londoner who had been bombed out of his house was asked if he wanted to be evacuated. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Nothing like this has ever happened before and it will never happen again. I wouldn’t miss it for all the tea in China.’

Nevertheless, it is clear that everyone was longing for the war to end. And perhaps it is the act of waiting for something that makes time go more slowly. Maybe nowadays, in our quick, convenient, instantly gratifying world, we lack that sense of expectation and anticipation. It is rare that we have to wait very long for anything.

I certainly know that some of my fans feel they have waited quite long enough for the next novel in my wartime Lavender Road series.

But it is finished and will be published next year. It’s called LONDON CALLING and takes the story up to Christmas 1943. I am so sorry it has taken so long, but I hope it will give you something to look forward to and perhaps make the intervening time pass a little more slowly!!