Rebecca fears she would have been useless and doomed to be an old maid in wartime

Had I been alive in 1914 and called upon – as the womenfolk were – to ‘keep the home fires burning’, you can be sure that the home fires would’ve gone out, pretty darn quickly. Because I am not a domestic goddess. Nor am I particularly organised, nor do I make a very good factory worker (I’ve tried). I’m not even very successful at maintaining grace under fire. And I’m vaguely pessimistic. The best any returning soldier could have expected from me would’ve been a small spark every time they flicked a light switch.

Though they wouldn’t have even gotten that from me, since the electric light was still only readily available in rich houses during WWI, and I certainly would not have been living in any kind of rich house.

Coming from the flat fields of Norfolk, I imagine it’s quite plausible that during one of the world wars, I would’ve been called upon to work the land. A lady of my (non-existent) station would have been expected to do her bit, I’m sure. I don’t live a million miles from Sandringham. Perhaps I could’ve gotten some reputable work there? Regardless, the home fires would’ve been smoking.

Because the problem is that I’m much more of a thinker than a doer. And I’ve heard that thinkers don’t do particularly well in wartime.

I can sit for hours musing over a line of poetry... but ask me what day of the week it is and sometimes I’ll have a hard job remembering what a week even is.

In a very literal sense I was always the one who allowed my mother’s log fire to spit its way into extinction every winter evening when she popped round to a friend’s.

Keep poking at it, she’d say. Throw on a fresh log soon, she’d advise. Do not under any circumstances let this go out!, she’d implore.

I’d nod from over the top of my book and agree that yes, we shouldn’t let it go out.

However, the moment her car left the driveway I’d become unreasonably immersed in my world and only realise I’d done a bad job protecting the fire when I started shivering and turning on the gas hobs in the kitchen to warm up.

Only then would I remember something called FIRE that needed to be attended to. By that time, I could hear mum’s car turning back onto the driveway and I would begin frantically fanning at the hearth, hoping against hope that something would ignite before she scuttled in through the front door.

I’m hopeless at stuff like this.

But by golly aren’t I grateful that plenty of women weren’t like me and DID manage to keep those home fires – and hopefully not house fires – burning through our two world wars.

Here’s to them – who rarely get much praise and notice but who – I for one – recognise did extraordinary things in keeping up morale and making sure the homeland kept ticking along quite nicely.

Thank goodness there weren’t too many of me around at the time…

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