It's happening around us all the time, and not always in ways we notice
Saw something the other day - FaceBook? Twitter? - about having wanted to be part of some Momentous Thing in History: No, not This Momentous Thing...
But the thing is with history is that we are always in the middle of it, and we very seldom see at the time what is momentous.
This is brought to you by somebody who in 1967 was massively preoccupied by A-levels and Going to Uni and as far as I can remember didn't much notice anything else that was going on, including the Abortion Act and the decriminalisation of homosexuality, and as somebody who had already taken on board the significance of contraception to female emancipation (or at least, the adverse impact of getting pregnant, see a whole string of novels of the period), you'd think I might have picked up at least on the former.
It is seldom that the historically significant in the long term makes itself known in the moment, when other things may seem far more, well, momentous.
(This is rather like that thing I have remarked about people making Insta-Classics judgements about books, movies, plays, etc...)
Okay, sometimes the historical moment is apparent -
And with all these people inappropriately invoking the Blitz Spirit, I was looking again at the Epilogue to Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: 'they could only defend themselves, they could not in any way attack their assailants'; and thinking about how much it was about making sure the blackout was up, and going to the shelters when the siren sounded, and queuing for rations, and economy with bath-water, and 'Is Your Journey Really Necessary' and 'Careless Talk Costs Lives', etc.
And reading novels and memoirs of the period, a lot of that was daily boredom and tedium, punctuated by terror.
As historian, wish more people would think the non-special-case days were worth recording, rather than deciding to become chroniclers when it's all going to hell, not that, as an historian, would actually discourage the creation of evidence. This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/3054984.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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