So where to begin? Leaky pipes, delayed hospital appointments, washing machine overflowing. Yeah, it’s been that sort of a week. If I’d managed two steps forward and one step back then it’d have been an achievement. And I’m sure I’m lucky compared to a lot of people right now because it could all have been worse, but oh, how you take having water that’s running through pipes rather than leaking out of them for granted and how much you miss it when it's not there.
And that leads me on to think of the trenches of the Somme and so many other battlefields and all those who are remembering the loved and lost this weekend. All the kids who lied about their age to join up, like my Dad did, and all the victims of war. The people who went down into the air raid shelters and night and came back to find their houses gone; like my Mum did because she was a Londoner. And they were the lucky ones. Far too many didn’t come out at all.
So, I’m trying to persuade a plumber to come out and I can’t do the washing for a bit and it’s a pain. But really, I am lucky, lucky lucky. Everyone I love is safe and relatively well. My house will still be here tomorrow and I’ve made a donation to a Water Aid charity and to the British Legion appeal, and tomorrow I shall remember my father and grandfather and the uncles on my husband’s side who didn’t come back from the War. Because if we forget, then it could happen again…
