I lived through the Blitz, and this is nothing like it

My son is a talented professional photographer. He  is using his daily exercise time — legimitately — to cycle round town from his Shoreditch pad, building up an impressive portfolio of slightly quirky images of the City and West End under lockdown. They include isolated Londoners, doing their daily workout, walking the dog, delivering meds or food to the needy, collecting rubbish; occasionally acting heroically, or more occasionally gathering in small groups and acting foolishly. He built up a similar off-beat portfolio during and immediately after 9/11 in New York. It led to a moving exhibition. I look forward to his new show when the London galleries reopen. Meantime there is Instagram.

A couple of days ago he remarked to me that he, like members of the commentariat, was noting a resurrgence of the Blitz Spirit. Some people really are rallying round to help out their neighbours. Volunteering to serve in hospitals or stack supermarket shelves. Or joining in commendable, door step clap-fests to thank health workers and others in less glamorous essential services. At home, people dance together, sing songs, exercise and indulge in other activities together via the Internet.

Then he said, “Dad, you are the only person I know who’s old enough to remember the Blitz.”  I do indeed. As a young child I lived through the war in East London, and I remember a surprising amount. I have also read a lot about the period, as research for the memoirs I’m writing. “How does what is happening today compare with the real Blitz Spirit?” he asked. “Are we kidding ourselves?”

It was a difficult question — here is the answer: there are huge differences. The obvious first thought is that the Virus Spirit is about coping with isolation. Not splendid isolation but miserable, debilitating, lonely isolation, especially if you are old and live alone, as I do. In contrast, the Blitz Spirit was about coming together. Physically. Not in virtual reality. Leave aside jolly cockneys round the old Joanna down the Queen Vic belting out “There’ll always be an England…” Maybe it happened. I was too young to attend.

But we (where “we” often means the grown-ups, sometime accompanied by the nippers) were squeezed together at night in tube stations or convivial family Anderson shelters. We queued, packed close together, for our rations. We ate in crowded British Restaurants — converted church and school halls, or community centres. We helped neighbours scrabble through the ruins of their homes for treasured possessions. Dads not called up for the military joined the Home Guard or the Air Raid Wardens. Mums found liberation, doing “mens’ work” in factories.

By all accounts other social norms fell away too. There was apparently plenty of sex, commercial and/or simply illicit — for the asking. Often, for the “ladies”, the sex was with good looking Yanks with money, fags and booze at the ready. Not a lot of social distancing back then. No wonder illegitimacy rates, and later broken marriages soared. Of course the episodes of death and destruction were ghastly. But for many ordinary people there were long periods in which a slightly hysterical, end of the world, party spirit prevailed. As for the wealthy, they had night clubs, expensive restaurants and liasons in luxury hotels.

But a bigger difference is that the Virus Spirit is about paranoia, uncertainty and destructive suspicion. The Blitz Spirit was about about certainty, simplicity and trust. You knew the enemy. Attacks came from the sky. They succeeded or failed and that was that till next time. You could relax. Unless you were one of the tiny sickly suspicious group who really believed that a disguised army of Fifth Columnists, secretly smuggled into the country, was waiting to kill you, you trusted your friends and neighbours. And you trusted your leaders too.

This time round, if you had been lucky enough to get close to the Heir to the Throne, or the Prime Minister recently, their presence would have been enough to threaten you with a terminal sickness.

Or what about the nice lady at the supermarket checkout? She might infect you. Your children might pick up the virus from their teacher. Or vice versa. People who look well, feel well, and quite possibly are well, may still carry the virus. Keep your distance from your own kids, and make sure you distance them from you. You might be the innocent, ignorant, loving carrier.

In short, you can’t even trust yourself. And that is surely the ultimate form of paranoia.

So we wear gloves to handle money, press the lift button or turn the door handle. I was told off for sitting on an empty bench in deserted Soho Square. “The virus can linger for days and you don’t know who was sitting there before you.’” If you say so, officer. We wear masks or not, depending on which expert we are listening to. We keep two metres apart. Or is it now eight? Informed opinion is divided. We know that if we have had the virus, however moderately, we can’t catch it again. Or perhaps we can? Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, admitted on Friday’s Today programme that he simply didn’t know. We cross the road and turn our head away if we happen to see a friend on an otherwise empty street. And we long for the touch of a human hand, whether it is a formal shake or a loving caress. It’s pretty disheartening.

There are however reasons to be glad. Here, briefly, to end on a lighter note, are a couple. First there is the technological miracle which Monica Porter identified a couple of days ago. The sheer joy of video conferencing with family and friends is immense. Each evening I get together with my two children, their partners and my grandchilden. From Shoreditch to Soho to Herne Hill we talk over each other, joke and laugh and the boys shout and wave. The other reason, the one which my son noted, is the kindness of strangers who are still able and willing to volunteer. Who knows. Perhaps that is enough to enable us to pull through. Happy Easter — we’ll meet again.