The Glass Half Full

One of the unexpected advantages of growing up on the East Coast of England during World War 2 is that so many things that people now take for granted became actually, for me, a treat. And I think it was because of this that I remain an optimist. A regular Polyanna one might say.

There we were with German bombers zooming over us night after night; sirens fiercely wailing and screeching; our garage hit by an incendiary bomb; a German pilot dropping dead in our field and his plane in another; searchlights raking the sky, blacked-out windows a must; no electricity; water that we took turns to pump up from a well twice a day and heated in what we called 'the copper'; no heating except for log fires and bomb craters all around our house from off-loaded cargo on the planes' way back. And that's how we thought life was since my brother and I were too small to know anything different.

We played in  the craters and imagined it was like climbing mountains - or so we thought. Nor did we think the Germans meant to bomb us particularly, for why would we be a target? When the Searchlight Camp down the road was turned into a German Prisoner of War Camp we used to have the prisoners working in our garden and to help grow vegetables and fruit. My mother gave them cups of tea and that awful ersatz 'Camp' coffee that was all the coffee we had then. They played with us children and we saw that so-called enemies could also be decent, nice guys. After the war, some of them actually came back to live in the country. We learnt early too, that life was precarious. That young British soldiers from a nearby camp who had taken us for exciting rides in their tanks down country lanes did not necessarily come back. Friends and relations died before their time.

Happiness in the Winter was being read to by the fire by the mellow but parafin smelling light of oil lamps. Or sitting around the radio to listen to the news and various radio programmes eating marmite and dripping on toast. Or playing Ludo or Snakes and Ladders or Monopoly. And going to the cinema in the local town when we all had to stand up for the National Anthem each time it was played.

In the Summer it was picking wild flowers, trying to roller skate, the smell of new mown hay, playing around on the swing my father had fixed to a branch of an oak tree and learning to swim and paddle a punt in the river that flowed lazily along a couple of meadows away. I still have a deep scar on my right shoulder from squeezing under the barbed wire with which everyone was forced to surround fields. Of course we had no TV and did not even know of its existence till we saw one in somebody's house in the late 1940s. Our greatest food treats were Heinz Tomato Soup which I once poured down the telephone when my father was on the line, thinking he should enjoy it too. Oh, and the once a week treat of current buns made only on Fridays by the village baker. I was ecstatic I remember, on my 9th birthday to get a cardboard box of crayons.  That same birthday for which my mother, who had been saving food coupons for months in order to make some cakes, ruined them all by adding some peppermint essence by mistake for almond. She cried with frustration for that - and much else I am sure. We were so upset and actually quite frightened for her upset.

We looked longingly at old advertisements for Fyffes bananas in the greengrocers (there was not a supermarket in sight then) because if we had ever had them before the war we had forgotten the taste. In 1945 I heard that a shop in the next village 7 miles away suddenly had the fruit. I cycled there as quickly as I could to try and buy one or two. They had all sold out but the shopkeeper gave me a banana skin which I was so thrilled with I took the nasty, brown, slimy thing onto the school bus the next morning.

I have been reflecting on my childhood and how excited we were when the war ended and a year or so later we actually got electricity and could just switch on a light. I thought of the irony of this when some 25 years later I wrote a book on Lighting...How lovely it was too, to be able to turn on a tap and have hot and cold running water without having to pump it up. Then there was the brilliance, to us, of our first black and white TV set,  the subsequent wonder of colour and the joy of receiving and reading books.

I have been reflecting particularly of course, because of the sadly shocking British riots and the looting whatever the tangle of causes.  Despite  deprivation in the mid 20th century - and it was nothing compared to France and Germany, Eastern Europe and the Near and Far East - we were, on the whole, happy and content - because, as I said, we did not really know of better things - and therefore so many improvements afterwards seemed such a bonus - even in the much derided 1950s which seem much more bleak looking back than in the actual living.

 In our present and questionable consumer society when pretty well every convenience is taken for granted; when expensive trainers and jeans et al for the young seem to be de rigeur whatever the income; and irritatingly, when conversation for so many seems to mean concentrating on a social network (blogs, of course, being an exception) or in texts whether under the table at a restaurant or dinner party, or in full sight walking down the street - or even whilst driving - at the expense of face to face, I suppose we might stop and think of this too though my older grandchildren tell me its simply generational.  But how can we get back that sense of all being in things together? Of the actual good things that can - and should - be done. Of the good of country rather than awful partisanship?  When my Australian grandaughter, Rosy, about to become 10 but then aged 8, wrote a speech about 'The Apple Revolution' and pointed out the heavy march of virtual conversation at the expense of the real thing - and real friendships for that matter - I took heart. 'Out of the mouth of very babes' etc. Or perhaps I'm being Polyanna yet again.

This might seem a long way from helping with decorating and life style issues. But it's not really. The desire to preserve what is good regardless of fashion, making the best of things, taking the rough with the smooth, realizing that sometimes better things come out of the seeming worst, all those old cliches would not be cliches unless they had some truth and were thus worth repeating. Think on it. Compromise is really an art in itself. All these little and not so little strictures are very much a part of lifestyle or the style of life we want to live now.