Lockdown diary day 66

Yet another gorgeous day spent at home in Whitehaven. Some of it enjoying our garden. It does look as though one of the compensations of a terrible year may be a magnificent summer.

In the evening my wife and I watched the film "The Guernsey literary & Potato peel pie society" based on the book of the same name, set mostly in the channel islands shortly after and referencing back to the Nazi occupation.

There were some extraordinary parallels to today, and not just because we have just had the 75th anniversary commemoration of VE day which almost exactly co-incided with the liberation of the Channel Islands.

Early on in the film one of the characters refers to the events which lead to the creation of the society included that the people of Guernsey felt hunger not just for food but for human companionship under the restrictions imposed by the German occupiers, something which inevitably strikes a chord in 2020 when the restrictions imposed to limit the deaths caused by COVID-19 have inevitably had a similar effect.

My wife and I also - correctly - identified the ship which takes the heroine to Guernsey in the film, as MV Balmoral, on which we took a day trip a few years ago from Whitehaven to the Isle of Man and back. The Balmoral was actually built three years after the events in the film, but she is typical of the sort of ferry which was in use by companies like the Red Funnel line on routes between the south coast of England and various destinations from the Isle of Wight to France at the time of the film.

Keep well.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Quote of the day 24th July 2020