Last scribbles in the diary of the war

The notes blipped feature on the back inside cover of the exercise book that Lorna used for her war diary entries.  From the figures, we can tell that Lorna’s mother Topsie was a knitter. It’s highly likely that Lorna knitted too.

The notes under the calculations about hospital appointments reveal that they date from 1939. We know this because 11th October fell on a Wednesday that year. Lorna did not write her diary on 11th October, nor on 1st November and 13th December in 1939. Otherwise we might have been informed about the nature of these appointments. However, the hospital is mentioned on other occasions:

- On 29th September 1939 Lorna wrote ‘I went to Gloucester to the Infirmary and am to go again on November 24th. Report is favourable on the whole, although I have more pain than has been usual for a long time’.
- In her diary entry for 29th January 1940 she said that she spent the previous two weeks in the Gloucester Infirmary for X-ray treatment.
- On 8th May 1940 Lorna reported a busy day which included ‘getting off from Gloucester’

It is almost certain that ill health forced Lorna to leave her job as an assistant English mistress at the Royal School Bath in 1939, and move into her parents’ house in Malvern.

Up until summer 1940, it appears that Lorna expected to make a full recovery from her illness. We see this in her war entry of 3rd June 1940 in the question: ‘When things have settled down again shall I be old?'

However, Lorna’s health appears to have worsened over the subsequent months. For example, on December 2nd 1940 she said: ‘I can’t sleep lately. I don’t know whether it is weakness or warfare… Being ill gives one such an awful gnawing sense of uselessness. There is so much that one could do, but the very first requisite is health and the second endurance, neither of which I can supply’.

Over the course of blipping Lorna’s work we have been asked on several occasions about her later life, e.g. on 22nd November 2019 Igor wondered ‘why have we not heard more about this remarkable woman?’, on 28th December 2019 JohnRH wrote ‘ I’d love to know if Lorna became someone well known; she was clearly an exceptional person’, and on 28th February 2020 kirstyk asked ‘are you going to reveal that Lorna grew up to be some famous author/artist/playwright? I hope she did!’  .

The sad truth is that by early 1941 Lorna was dying, and we’re sorry to tell readers of this journal that we will soon be bidding Lorna adieu. This is going to be difficult for us all. We have wept on several occasions when composing these journal entries, and we know from comments on earlier entries that several blippers have shed tears alongside us, particularly over Lorna's passages on the horrors of war, and in response to her sensitive poetry. The blips to this journal over the next few days are going to make hard writing/reading.