When Lockdown was first announced, no-one mentioned the key to creativity would be locked away along with the car keys. There have been so many occasions when I have stretched out on the sofa, a cushion under my laptop ready to start writing and I’ve felt the sudden need to purge my email instead, or even, heaven help me, to do the ironing. It’s called displacement therapy and I’ve become an expert at it.
Bobby's War
However, there is one strategy that has helped to keep me out of the Lockdown doldrums and that is, at the first whiff of being overwhelmed by the monotony, isolation and empty diary, I have picked up the phone to a 96-year-old WAAF plotter I met when I was researching my war novels.
‘KBO’ she says firmly to me, recalling the maxim of Churchill who had far more to deal with than not being able to enjoy meals out with friends or trips to see family. “Keep buggering on,” he would tell anyone who asked him what his strategy was and, when you think about how they had six years of being bombed, a ration book for paltry supplies and the threat of a telegram landing on the front mat, you can see why there are times that such a pragmatic approach is the only way to get through.
Helen Mills has frequently given me the perspective I’ve needed and hearing how she hasn’t been out in months, only seeing the lady who comes in to help her clean once a week, has stopped my moan mid-sentence. She’s sent me photos of her wisteria and urged me to send pictures of my garden. I taught her how to do Zoom and she was thrilled at how it would be able to bring people’s faces into her living room. And there was I feeling sorry for myself because I’d been on another lovely Peak District walk from my back door.
Prompted by the guilt that unleashed, I started to go back through my research notes from my chats with other servicewomen and they certainly conspire against me to dispel any self-pity. Take the Land Army girls who had back-ache, blisters and chapped cheeks from digging turnips up in rain and snow whose memories are helping me write ‘Hannah’s War’. Or the amazing Air Transport Auxiliary pilot, Mary Ellis, who inspired ‘Bobby’s War’. She would be racing out to deliver yet another aircraft, scanning her Little Blue Book to see how it behaved in high winds. And then there was my own mother, Eileen, who was a WAAF in Bomber Command. Her stories of waiting in vain for Lancaster crews to return encouraged me to write ‘Lily’s War.’ I began to think that having an empty diary was a poor comparison.
So it’s back to the laptop, but I am limited as to how many times I’m allowed to remind everyone how lucky we all are that we’re not being bombed from the skies.’ I’m restricted to once a week now.