Rereading "Mrs. Milburn's diaries : an Englishwoman's day-to-day reflections, 1939-45", while recovering from agricultural labour, it occurred to me that her account could not be used as a guide today, although she was a very ordinary English woman, as she points out herself.
Capital, land, labour and technical knowledge are not available to millions of people in England. Willingness to feel how I feel right now, and Mrs Milburn describes feeling after a nasty November day in her garden, damp and cold, hoeing, weeding, digging over, clearing and mulching, is not likely to be offered either. Few even know it is required; or the acceptance of damage to crops and garden produce, or their complete loss from weather, insects, moulds and marauders. An entire skill set and culture, and the physical strength and strength of mind to put them into practice, has disappeared from our world. Let's hope it won't be needed. But it was the difference between surviving and starving in England only two generations ago.
And in the generation before that, in the great Depression, people did starve in England - read Woodruff's accounts of between the Wars. People are much softer than they think they are. And we are going to have to toughen up and learn a lot in a hurry.
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11 comments:
Woodruff's books are brilliant.
And scary; in some ways we are more vulnerable to systemic breakdown, and less equipped to cope with it than in the times he portrays. Speaking for myself (and I would have said I was reasonably exercised and walked and swum) I am a total softy recovering from only a week in the fields.
You're right, I know I'm worryingly soft. It's hard to imagine life even a couple of generations ago.
Might I ask S, did the horses make it too, from the advancing Russian front?
I ache all over HG and all I did was paint a room this weekend...softy is right.
Just the broken white or a colour scheme to share, L?
Well, it is a dulux creation HG since you ask, a slightly warm white to go with the terracotta carpet. I got fed up with Dimity (a Farrow and Ball number that goes with everything, yet isn't magnolia)...
It's the pictures, isn't it. Once they start going back up the colour of the walls has to be discreet. But sometimes I wish for the deep reds and golds and greens they get away with in museums and galleries. Huge rooms I suppose and lots of subtle lighting.
we did that once, in a previous house, not huge - deep red / green / gold wallpapers, by (ahem) Laura Ashley
we have the pictures etc but it was a bit extreme, Victorian
we haven't repeated the exercise
I had a gorgeous bedroom once, the walls were dark velvety red and I slept like a baby. However I had to return the walls to white when I moved out so I haven't had the nerve since...
The colour was chosen specifically for the benefit of the pictures HG. Spot on.
There really is a pretty painted room here, done out as a pergola with climbing flowers and things, and five doors (not counting a secret door that gives to a deep cupboard) opening onto a staircase, an anteroom, the summer sitting room, a kitchen and the music room. And a guest coming in from the garden did get foxed briefly.
But ND has doubts. I have doubts about his red, green and gold splendours. Though I once painted a room orange to match the parrots on the chintz curtains, in England that is. In Italy they'd have painted in parrots. They have in the Palazzo d'Avanzati. The children like it...
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