Getting back to work

It is a long time since I last posted on here. Big apologies to anyone who has looked for posts, but I haven’t been writing for a couple of years and I just haven’t got round to it!! Lazy, I know, but somehow other things have filled the gap. I have read more, watched more films, done more crosswords, cooked more (including some fantastic world street food recipes!), and Marc and I have been learning Portuguese, (480 consecutive days on Duolingo and I can now say, with confidence, that there is a large shark residing under the table!)

Also the pandemic made us realize what a privilege it is to live in this corner of beautiful Pembrokeshire. We have relished our land (we have planted 100 baby trees to add to the 400 we planted 8 years ago,) we have turned our garden into a wildlife haven, (this year we have newts and toad spawn in our old bath tub pond), and we have watched Hera, our Greek rescue dog become jollier and jollier as she runs around our fields.

So now things are slowly returning to normal, whatever that is. Or are they? Just as we feel the Covid threat has lifted, we have major new problems confronting us. The idiotic Brexit decision continues to cause difficulties here in the UK, businesses are struggling, the issues over Northern Ireland’s status rumble dangerously on, a rapidly rising cost of living is making actual living very hard for many. Even holiday makers are facing problems, flights being cancelled, huge queues at airports and ferry terminals due to lack of staff, and extra security checks (all due to Brexit). Our government is in disarray, led by someone clearly unfit for office. We can no longer move or trade freely with our closest neighbors. And all this, just when Europe is needing to pull together to stand up to Vladimir Putin.

Suddenly, horribly, it doesn’t feel a million miles away from 1930’s Europe when Adolf Hitler was beginning his murderous rampage. The death and destruction, the refugees, the privations, the hard decisions, the political vacillation, the ominous threat of escalation. This has inevitably led me to think about my Lavender Road books, and about all the fascinating research I did then. There are so many parallels, and so many stories I didn’t use at that time.

So, I am beginning to think about writing another series. I have already done some outlining and some extra research, and I think I might have found some interesting characters and themes to pursue!

I can’t promise that it will be soon though as I plan to do the bulk of the writing next winter when we will probably be back in hibernation! But maybe, just maybe, there will be something else for you to read next year!!

Wildlife in war

While I have been researching the novel I am writing now, the fourth in my Lavender Road series, among the trauma of WW2, I have discovered one small, unexpected, beneficial aspect of war. (And I am not just talking about winning and ridding the world of the Nazi/fascist cruelty of Adolf Hitler and Mussolini.)

It is an odd fact that, even as people are fighting wars, the natural world gets on with its own routines and migrations. During WW2 there was a cessation of shooting wild birds in Europe. The inhabitants of Italy, Greece, Malta and the other Mediterranean islands were too busy shooting each other, or their enemies, to carry out their traditional, brainless slaughter of migrating birds. As a result, the populations of song birds, swallows and swifts etc., increased considerably, (only, sadly, to be targeted once again the minute the war was over.)

I found other odd side benefits too. In prisoner of war camps across Europe, British POW amateur ornithologists kept meticulous records of birds passing by, creating a comprehensive log of species, some of which were previously unrecorded.

While fighting the Japanese in the jungles of Malaya, a British SOE agent, Freddie Spencer Chapman, recorded the wildlife he encountered with scientific dedication.

In London, for years after the WW2, the broken, damaged buildings and undeveloped over grown bomb sites provided homes for a plethora of birds and insects. Nobody was too bothered about appearances at that time. Certainly not to the extent of knocking off under-eaves house martins nests because they made a bit of mess on the walls, as so often happens now.

When we visited the Falkland Islands a few years ago we were interested to see how the failure to clear the mines off the beaches there has had a beneficial effect on sea bird populations. Protected from human interference, too light to set off mines, their numbers have increased steadily.

Most modern warfare seems to be more detrimental. The on-going unrest in Africa, Afghanistan and the Middle East has devastated wildlife habitats. Oil waste from damaged vehicles has contaminated land and natural water sources. Deforestation and pollution are rife, and conservation largely impossible.

But on the other hand, there are reports that, like the migrating birds of WW2, and perhaps due to people being too busy shooting each other to bother with slaughtering other species, the survival rate of Asiatic black bears, grey wolves, leopard cats and porcupine in certain areas of Afghanistan has improved.

I am (clearly) no expert. But while I can understand the inevitable effects of warfare on wildlife, I do wish that, where war or privation isn’t to blame, people would try to give wildlife a chance, whether it be welcoming a martin’s nest under their eaves, leaving a gap in a converted barn roof for an owl, cutting down on the use of slug pellets, or signing a petition to stop the relentless slaughter of migrating birds over the Mediterranean.