This is a passage from Nella Last's War that I really liked. The book is a diary written by an English housewife during World War II. I found the entire book thought-provoking and fascinating.
"One think I've noticed since the war: what a lot of people - mostly women- seem to have no resources of their own to fall back on. My generation had no wireless (radio) and few pictures, so perhaps we had to find other things - particularly when we lived in the country, as I often did with Gran. We took the opportunity of being alone to wash our hair (now no girl seems to wash her own), mend a hole in stockings (stockings today do not stand much mending), sew buttons on - but then again, there are few buttons to sew on underwear. Older women shredded vegetables for the following day's soup, but now it is all tinned soup. They gladly read yesterday's newspaper, if they had not had time before. There were always oddments of embroidery or sewing, or letters to be written, and a few hours alone were a boon and a blessing. We liked to sit down and relax by the fire and think things out - to plan menus and shopping lists. Of course, living today is in every way more exciting and thrilling: but where today it's as if people snatch a piece of rich Christmas cake and eat it, with creamed coffee, on top of a good dinner, we took our cake and ate it slowly, savouring each mouthful and finding time to think how wonderful it was that the ingredients came from so many far-off places."
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