Looe Island and Lorna aged 18, 1932

This is the 365th blip in Lorna’s journal. To mark this blip milestone, here’s a photograph of 18 year old Lorna on a windy day in Cornwall in summer 1932. In the background of this shot is Looe Island, a holiday destination beloved by Lorna’s family across the generations. It looks like Lorna may have a bandaged up ankle injury here. However, this hasn’t deterred her from climbing a wall for the photograph!

It’s taken us over a year to reach 365 blips. This is because we didn’t expect to blip every day when we started this project on 31st August 2019. Our initial plan was simply to focus on Lorna’s war diary entries with a few ‘holding’ items, such as a piece of art work or a poem, posted to sit between the gaps in Lorna’s wartime narrative.

Thanks to a big donation of artefacts from Lorna’s niece three months into the project, in November last year we suddenly had access to a lot more material associated with Lorna. Since then, other members of Lorna’s family have also supplied pictures and information. Their generosity has allowed us to post a photograph every day since November 10th 2019. For example in recent weeks: the grandson of Lorna’s first cousin Diana has shared some wonderful family photographs with us, including the beautiful shot of Lorna’s first cousin Barbara as a bridesmaid at their first cousin Diana’s wedding in 1942 (blipped on 20th August 2020); Lorna’s first cousin David (now in his 90s) has helped us identify many of the children in the shot of the 1932 family picnic in Looe posted on 5th August 2020.

Lorna’s last blip milestone was her 300th blip on July 15th 2020. Since then we have followed the progress of the war through her diary entries, learnt more about Lorna’s family, and witnessed where the war and everyday life intersect.

The ‘main event’ in 1940 covered by Lorna’s recently blipped war diary entries is the Battle of Britain: see, for example, the statistics that Lorna supplies in her diary entry for 31st July 1940. Lorna also records the destruction of the French navy on 18th July 1940, and the summer 1940 peace offensive on 27th July 1940. We have seen that Lorna’s attitude to the attacks on Britain in summer 1940 varied dramatically: fear on 3rd August; resignation on 26th August; and almost casual irritation at the inconvenience of being bombed on 11th September. More broadly, we have learnt more about the family’s efforts at home during wartime, such as civil defence (23rd August), stocking up blood supplies (24th August), and hosting billeted soldiers (27th July).

Amongst Lorna’s art work (e.g. posted on 31st August 2020) and poetry (e.g. posted on 4th September 2020), we’ve uploaded records of happier times in some of the recent gaps between diary entries. These include photographs from the family holidays in Looe (e.g. pirates landing on the island on 17th August 2020), and writing by family members other than Lorna, such as Lorna’s Aunt May’s hysterical account of Lorna’s father’s dreadful driving that we posted on 21st August 2020.

We have learnt more about Lorna herself over recent weeks, including her love for her mother who was seriously ill in July 1940 (see entries for 23rd July and 27th July), and Lorna's passion for boats, dogs and books (see the extra for 17th August 2020). We have also posted photographic evidence that Lorna was taken to the World War I battlefields in 1920 when aged 6 (27th August 2020), and conclude that this experience helped form her views on war expressed in her war diary as well as other samples of her writing posted to this journal, such as the poem 'On Flanders field' blipped yesterday.

When we started Lorna’s journal we had no idea that it would be of so much interest to other blippers, nor that it would grow into into this rather unusual archive of materials centred around one young middle class English woman in the first half of the twentieth century. It’s certainly more than the wee daily task originally envisaged:  “All we need to do is post a photo of a page from the diary and a transcription for each entry, and it’s not every day, after all”…!!!

We are delighted with every star, comment and favourite left by those who visit Lorna’s journal, and each day especially look forward to hearing from Lorna’s regular ’blipfriends’.

Thank you to everyone who makes so worthwhile our work in bringing Lorna to life in her blipfoto journal.