Wednesday 3 February 2016



Available now in considerable quantity are varieties of Swiss roll. The chocolate kind are filled with thick mock cream - margarine I guess. Have just eaten two slices of this muck, some coconuts and cherry cakes and almond biscuits for my tea and feel heavy with indigestion. 14th February, 1951

Serves her right, don't you think? I'm now 500 pages into A Notable Woman, and we're still only at the start of the 1950s. But oh dear, Miss Jean Lucey Pratt ... could we ever have been friends? Was there ever such a desperate, man-hungry spinster, loneliness spilling over the page - and sometimes I want to pick you up and shake you. There you are, well into your 30s and desperate to lose your blasted virginity which is such a millstone around your neck ... come on girl, it's wartime, a schooner of cheap British sherry for courage and surely you could find a Yank to oblige! I do feel that your chances would have been greatly improved by the invention of contact lenses as this unfortunately is one of your more flattering photographs. But couldn't you at least take your specs off when you go to a dance ...
Actually, I would love to read the diaries of the men you persuade yourself you're in love with.  You must have been terrifying ... you're Bridget Jones with Superglue. If anything in trousers passes you in the corridor at work, you're 0 to Altar in 60 seconds in your fevered imagination. You know those married men who turn up unannounced on your doorstep once or twice a year? You're not his mistress, dear - it's what the 21st century would call a booty call. I know it's cruel to point this out - but, honestly, when a man puts in an appearance so rarely that you don't even realise that he's been dead for a whole twelve months ...
As a reader, you do feel as if you're drowning in someone else's loneliness, and timidity (the tradesmen might find out if a man stayed the night at her cottage and then her name would be mud in the village) and lack of self-esteem buoyed up by pep talks. But there couldn't be a more vivid account of how it felt to be one of 3 million surplus women. Always a looker-on, she was just slightly too old to be called up and so she spent WW2 in a dreary office job in a metals company.
What a waste it all seems. Jean hoped that her diaries would one day be read by posterity and now they are. But if only she had ripped off her camiknickers - thrown her Liberty bodice to the winds - got rid of the damn cats ... and lived her life instead of writing all those millions of words.

6 comments:

Cosy Books said...

I couldn't resist reading your thoughts but mind you, it was through my hands because I haven't started my copy yet. Mary, we should have done a read-along because you're making me laugh out loud. You missed your calling as an Agony Aunt!

mary said...

I do feel a bit heartless ... but there's so much of it, Darlene! She calms down a bit once she hits her 40s and abandons all hope!
But I do find it much more readable Few Eggs which was so impersonal I didn't care much.

Sue said...

And yet, Mary, it's quite odd but the more you write about this book, the more I find I want to get stuck into it. You sound like you've enjoyed it nonetheless.I read (most of) the Oranges and Eggs book as well. My absolute favourite ever of this sort of thing is still Joan Wyndham's Love Lessons, though.

mary said...

I did enjoy it, Sue - and I think you would, too - I just got exasperated with her when she's running after all those mediocre men! (Not that one ever did oneself, oh, no!) But the book is so long, it embraces her whole life from 15 until she dies and so clearly she changes and there's times when you identify with her more. By the end - when she's mellowed and found her way - and opened a bookshop (even if she did specialise in cat books!) - I'd got rather fond of her. As, clearly, had many of her friends/neighbours. I'm rather missing her now!

Anonymous said...

I've just found your blog by accident while researching Jan Struther - whose books I am heavily into at the moment - and I had to comment because your blog sounds like the inside of my head when I read :D and also because soeone up there mentioned my all time favourite inspirational wartime good time girl, Joan Wyndham. She seems so rarely mentioned but she's truly inspired my life, so its great to "see" a fellow fan!

mary said...

Glad you found your way here, Anonymous! I can see I'm going to have to read Love Lessons again - it's ages since I read it, not since it was published - was it back in the 80s? I've just been searching for the copy I was convinced I possessed but I can't find it on the shelf.