This is the journal of Margaret Kennedy (author of The Feast) during the summer of 1940 in England.
It's kind of a sobering read, and made me realize just how filtered our view of history is when we can look back and know precisely who won the war and how things developed. From such a hindsight-is-20/20 view, it can be difficult to imagine the feelings of those who actually lived during the war, including all their fears and very real trauma as they wondered what was going to happen to themselves and their children. For them, it was by no means the foregone conclusion that it is for us.

Margaret Kennedy's journal was, therefore, a slightly harrowing, agitating read. And yet it was peculiarly relatable for people who have been through, or at least witnessed, traumas of one variety or another the last couple of years.

Her writing is strong and sincere, as one would expect, as she records things that are comedic, things that are frustrating, and things that are terrifying all at the same time.
Here are some excerpts. (Tell me that the last one doesn't resonate DEEPLY!)
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I gave them a little lecture on the chins-up-we-are-all-in-the-front-line theme. Later on Lucy brought me a postcard which she had written to a school crony. It said: "The waw is getting very bad and we are learning to nit."
If you think of it as the waw it does not seem so frightening somehow.
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She reminded me about Pearl, a little servant, a regular alley-cat of a girl from a terribly poor slum home. When Pearl heard that Hitler said he would be in London by August 15, she said, in amusement rather than indignation:
"Eh! The cheeky monkey!"
This cheers us both up. We agreed that it is an example of the unsuggestibility which may be our great national safeguard. We may be able to stand the bombs if we don't get a superstitious fear of the men who drop them...
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Beryl, who lives six miles from here, came to tea. She is sustained, even now, by knowing more than anybody else. There are people who would be jaunty in hell, so long as they could run about spreading titbits of inside information about what Asmodeus said to Lucifer the other day.
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We all find it difficult to sleep, these days. I expect we shall learn how to, in time, when we have got used to living through history.
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Last night I got so desperate that I went out onto the roof of the music room. I thought if I couldn't sleep I might at least get some air, for the blackout makes our bedrooms stuffy... I took up a quilt and a pillow and dragged the sofa out under the sky and watched 'the moon set and the Pleiades".
One by one the stars vanished and the night ticked on from moment to moment till it came to that mysterious pause it makes just before the start of a new day, as if the earth hesitated for a few seconds, and then got the order to roll on. Then a cock crew down in the valley and I heard the ponies snorting in their stable. The light came back into the bowl of the air, drop by drop, till I could see the black ridges of the pine woods on the hills. A wind came and rustled the trees. The dawn smells of earth and moss and leaves began to rise up, and the morning star appeared in a sky of palest aquamarine. The world was rushing over to the sun and the upshot beam mounted higher and higher until all the little clouds in the zenith flushed pink.
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I still cannot sleep so I went to Dr Middleton to ask for a bromide. He used to attend all our family in the old days. He asked:
"Are ye worrying about anything?"
When I said I was worrying about Hitler coming, he said, "He won't," so firmly that I almost believed him. He looked me up and down very crossly and said:
"I suppose ye've been reading the newspapers?"
I pleaded guilty.
"What d'ye want to do that for?"
"I like to know what is happening."
...He asked me how often I listened to the wireless.
"Four times a day."
"And that's three times too often. I'm sure I wish that infernal contrivance had never been invented. When I think of all the insanity that's poured out over the ether every minute of the day, I wonder the whole human race isn't in a lunatic asylum. And what good does it do ye to know what's happening? Ye aren't responsible. Ye don't like it. Ye can't stop it. Why think about it? Go home and fly kites with your children."
"How many other patients have you said all this to?"
"You're only the twenty-seventh this week."

(Whew! It's somehow kind of comforting to know that human reactions to stressful times aren't new.) ( )