Few Eggs and No Oranges

Vere Hodgson, (1976) London: Dennis Dobson: 'A diary showing how unimportant people lived in London and Birmingham lived through the war years 1940 - 1945 written in the Notting Hill area of London'. (has been recently published by Persephone publishers)

Phew, what a long title.

Diary format, (just like a blog). Small pleasures and daily life during the blitz in London. Very captivating.

Vere is a spinster in her 30s. She used to be a governess for Mussolini's daughter in Florence. During the war, she works for a charity doing good works and keeps a diary writing a few paragraphs every couple days. This is a long book. 

Lots of discussion of bombs: the sounds, the fires, the blackout, the discomfort of sleeping in bomb shelters and feeling 'second rate' and sleep deprived, and the deaths. Many passages of Vere hurrying home with a torch in with 'barking' machine fire and whooshing bombs, checking for fires from the roof and practising putting out fires. She is passionately involved in the war and feels personally uplifted by Churchill's speeches.

The main title - Few Eggs and No Oranges - captures the shortage of food, one of the main themes in the book. The thrill of fresh fruit, kippers and even potatoes.

Sometime in the middle of the war Vere moves into a flatlet (with a sink and a cooker!) and I loved reading about her revelling in a sense of home.

Vere is also involved in metaphysics and the diary is peppered with peculiar predictions about the war by fortune tellers.