I've thought of myself as a writer for a long time and then thought so much about writing that it hasn't really happened. There have been snippets of this and that over the years - attempts at poetry, quickly-aborted diaries and even the beginnings of children's stories, but nothing shared (not seriously) - certainly nothing published. (Newspaper articles and pamphlets for work don't really count, no matter how proud I was of them when I wrote them all those years ago!) Now this blogging-business intrigues me. People say it's easy and it's been easy so far, assuming I've done everything right. I want it to get me writing again. And I'm writing now, so it's working. I want to express myself - to explore my own ideas by writing about them - and I want to dare to put my ideas out there; to open them up for examination by other people. I've got things to say.
Now I wonder: am I really that interesting? Will anything I say be of the slightest interest to anyone else? Are my thoughts valid, or are they laughable? Is my style of writing any good? Will my blog attract any attention whatsoever?
Where to start?! Perhaps a minor realization from a weekend conversation with my aging grandparents.
Over breakfast on Sunday, conversation turned as it often does with them to the second world war - they'd recently been to a 40s-themed weekend away. They were pleasantly surprised when I told them that primary school children learn about the home front during the war - about rationing, the blitz, evacuation, the role of women, the land army, etc. (I'm a teacher, by the way.) They were eager then to tell me about the hardships of rationing and of their own memories of evacuation.
It never takes long for Grampy to get on a roll and start reeling off his stories from the past and, like all good grandsons, I let him tell them, but it's rare for them to be new or (to be frank) for them to be very interesting. From time to time though, it happens that they are. On Sunday, I learnt for the first time about the boy who was evacuated to Devon from London to live with my Grampy - about how he had lived at first with a different, posher family that couldn't get on with him, about how he had been scared of thunder and lightning until Grampy watched it from the bedroom window with him and about how his mother had visited them and had turned out to be 'a proper tart'!
I was already thinking then about blogging - about what I would write - and wondering if anything I could write would really be very interesting. Grampy's memories of Frank (I think that was his name) brought to life for a moment a person who had been through an experience I can not imagine. Had Frank listened to the drone of German bombers over London, their bombs exploding and the crackle of anti-aircraft fire before he departed London? Had he seen the fires and the destruction? Did he know people who died? Was he afraid of more than just the thunder and the lightning? Did he miss his home, his mum? I'll bet he never forgot his time in Devon. I wonder if he remembered my Grampy. I wonder if he is still alive. I wonder how his war changed his life. Grampy's memories brought back to mind the experience of all those evacuated children. I remembered too his other war-stories, and suddenly they carried more meaning, more weight. I thought (as I think I was supposed to a long time ago) about people in Libya and Ivory Coast and Haiti and Afghanistan and Palestine and about the refugees from all those countries and so many others.
Grampy had things to write. Frank did too. Their diaries would be worth a read. I should look up the blog of someone living in Libya or Palestine or Afghanistan right now. (So should you!) I reckon theirs would stir up more than mine can. I might find it hard to think of something worthwhile to write - something that could appeal to any sort of readership - but I should be glad of that. My blog can offer a relatively bland commentary on a privileged education system, far-off conflicts, our democracy and my indulgent social life. Better that though than the fears of an evacuee, the plight of a refugee or the terror of the oppressed and bombed-upon.
My thoughts tonight are with them.
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