Time to heed wartime generation over lockdown – Yorkshire Post Letters

I CAN’T help feeling there are a lot of moaners unable to think past their own discomforts and problems, and then there are those who are determined to find fault with anything the authorities and institutions do in order to make political points.

There are the greedy ones who empty the shelves, go to illicit parties, deny the existence of Covid and spread their discontent on social media. The only social media we had in the war was talking to the neighbours or listening to the radio.

Covid is probably the worst scenario we could ever imagine, apart from the two world wars. I was born just before the Second World War started but my mother and father coped – he went away to serve in the RAF and ultimately the Far East and we did not see him until 1945.

Yet mother soldiered on as a tailoress making uniforms in Huddersfield. Grandparents looked after us as necessary. 
My sister, who was seven years older, passed to go to Greenhead High School despite a war going on.

I went to primary school 
and what I can remember of it is the comfort and care, beds 
rolled out for naps, little bottles of milk, fairly nice school dinners, lovely teachers, nit nurses and the staff numbers diminished by those who had to go to war.

We lived in Sheepridge, Huddersfield, in what was probably a deprived area then. We had strict learning schemes – rote learning of tables, spelling and writing etc – and I passed on the second list to go to secondary school, admittedly the only one of two on the lists that year.

My point is that I was educated through an extremely difficult period with no father and it all came right in the end as I ended up a college lecturer.

All those who are worried about their children’s education, including a lot of the teachers, should think positive and help young people by making sure they use the learning packages and facilities provided to the letter.

I remember right at the end of the first lockdown and children were to go back to school, a teacher on television complaining that her school would not be ready. They’d had six weeks!

Having said all this my neighbourbourhood in Mirfield has been uplifting. I have never spoken to so many neighbours as I do now as they call hello in the street, or run past our house as they do their daily walks, and we ring bells and clap, and generally help each other. Very reminiscent of the war years.

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