The written word

I was thinking this morning about the contribution of writers and the value of the written word in these increasingly stressful times - certainly to communicate accurate information but also to provide diversions from the seemingly relentless march of problems thrown up by the corona virus. Books, magazines and on-line reading materials will hopefully be good companions for many of us in our enforced isolation. The book I'm reading at the moment, "All Among The Barley"  by Melissa Harrison, is transporting me to the very different world of 1933. It was a world that had big problems of its own of course, but the book is beautifully written and the story of farmer's daughter Edie Mather's coming of age is captivating.

How important our own writing about the present situation could be too - our "unprecedented" situation, as we're continually reminded by the politicians. As a small child my father lost his eldest sister in the 1918 'flu pandemic and my father-in-law was only a year old when his young mother succumbed. There was hardly a family in the land, indeed in the world, that wasn't touched by the outbreak. There's plenty written in the medical and history textbooks about it but I've found comparatively little, other than brief mentions, in personal, family history accounts.  "This too shall pass" and, when it's all over, no doubt there will be endless dissection of the details in the press and the textbooks. But something so major, with such far reaching implications for our individual lives, surely deserves chronicling on a more personal level for our future family readers too.