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When it all began

This is the post excerpt.

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My late husband, George Spenceley, hugging a giant redwood in California.

About the author

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Long ago, in my early twenties, I remember looking out of a window at an old lady in an armchair in a garden. I found myself wondering what it would be like to be an old lady, say, in her eighties and finding it impossible to visualise. Now I well and truly know, and it is absolutely nothing like anything I might have envisaged, so it seemed like a good time to start a blog about how extraordinary and spectacular life can be, in all its happiness and sadness. And maybe compare notes with those in the same situation or those who yet have a long way to go before they get there.

One thing is certain: it is a very, very different world. I know there is a likelihood of every older generation expressing this opinion when comparing it with ‘my young days’, but it is hard to imagine a world in a more troubled state, even without any official declaration of war. So I thought it would be interesting to invite the views of my contemporaries, who will share some of my memories, and other generations, who won’t, to see if we might come up with some ideas on how to make things better.

So, what next? Any ideas?

I’ve referred to some of mine (ideas) in future posts and if you have any I should be very pleased to know about them.

First and last scribbles

My writing career goes back to childhood in World War Two, so I’m undeniably old. At that time stories were written in school exercise books. One on-going adventure featured twins who were befriended by a gnome called Topsy and his friendly dragon, Fagus. The latter had a dip in his back, full of cushions in which you could travel in comfort, though I never explained what happened when it rained.

The stories were illustrated and, as we lived in London, the drawings often showed bombers, anti-aircraft guns and barrage balloons.

Interestingly at that age I felt quite indestructible and found the raids exciting rather than frightening. This could be why my preferred themes are concerned with ordinary people dealing with extraordinary situations and, in particularly, being part of the cure rather than part of the problem.

Author: sylvie nickels

I’ve been writing since the age of ten, i.e. over seventy years! Initially a travel writer for most of my working life, in advanced years have returned to my first love, fiction. You can check me out on http://www.sylvienickels.com Other aspects of my life and how they have affected my writing will be found in my posts. These include references to my husband, three stepsons and the various interests that have sustained me. View all posts by sylvie nickels

Peace

The main thing I remember about the declaration of peace in 1945 is the day I went into central London with Mum and Dad and my sister Sinette. There were thousands and thousands of people and we waited for ages outside Buckingham Palace before King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, the two princesses and Winston Churchill came out on to the balcony. The two princesses were the nearly same ages as Sinette and me, so we grew up in our different ways together.

One of the things that made a huge impression about peacetime was the amount of light. There were street lights and, after years of blackout, you could see into people’s houses. We still had the thick fogs that went with coal fires, especially in winter, and we still had rationing for quite a long time. The fact that we were free to go anywhere probably didn’t impact on me at that stage, though it must have done on Mum, who was Swiss and had been separated from her family for over five years. She and Dad had met on a ship going to New Zealand – he was on business, she was looking after the child of a Scottish family who were emigrating. They married in 1924, Sinette was born in 1926 and I in 1930.

We returned for our first postwar visit to Switzerland in the summer of 1946, and a chief memory is the amazing amount of goods on sale. The Swiss family had always felt rather daunting. There was such a lot of it to begin with, cousins from all over the country and beyond, for whom innumerable family reunions were organised. Fortunately, pressurised by Mum who insisted we speak some French during the war, our accents were quite good, and our vocabularies soon caught up. The one aspect that endured from those early journeys was my love of trees and forests which remained with me for the rest of my life. Sinette’s son Nick inherited this too.

The stories were illustrated and, as we lived in London, the drawings often showed bombers, anti-aircraft guns and barrage balloons.

Interestingly at that age I felt quite indestructible and found the raids exciting rather than frightening. This could be why my preferred themes are concerned with ordinary people dealing with extraordinary situations and, in particularly, being part of the cure rather than part of the problem.

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Author: sylvie nickels