2024 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

florianatwobob

Yes Pip, drugs are part of the Murder Must Advertise plot along with the Bright Young Things, Diane De Momery (sp) crowd. 

Laura_Elsewhere

PipneyJane said:

@Laura_Elsewhere - yes, I understand about the post-war period and the 1920’s. Those who could afford it went wild on drink/drugs/risk taking because a) they needed the adrenaline rush to make themselves feel better/take away the ache inside/drown out the memories, and b) they’d witnessed so much death and destruction that they wanted to LIVE and not get to their own deaths lamenting that they’d missed out.  Even Nancy Mitford novels hint at the drug use and self-destructive behaviour of the “Bright Young Things”, so it didn’t die out at the end of the decade. 

It wasn't the people with the shell-shock who were the self-destructive ones, by and large, though- it was their younger siblings and relatives, to a great extent- and although yes, drug use continued at some level, the extreme behaviour only lasted til about the mid-1920s, perhaps 1926, and then dropped to a level that we would probably recognise nowadays. It's very odd how it's barely-known now. The novels you mention were, of course, written afterwards, in the dying-down phases. 

Anyway- that's a huge digression! 

Our furniture-moving is continuing and really starting to show results, not least that I am finding all kinds of clothing that I had been puzzling over for some years, and so I can wear them once more! How on earth can cardigans and so on get so thoroughly lost in a small flat?!

MrsCD

Well, every day is a schoolday, they say! Thanks for the lesson!  
When I was a very young bank teller, we had an older customer who would dash under a table if a car backfired in the street. I often wonder what had happened to him to make him react that way, but it's possible that it was a result of something in the war.

Cherryfudge

Great points, @Laura_Elsewhere and @PipneyJane.

My paternal grandfather, who I never met, served in WW1. I have a photo of him as a dashing young thing and he had an 'interesting' war. According to my Dad he was promoted and demoted a number of times as he was quite impetuous. I wonder now if he may have been neurodiverse. He was awarded the Military Cross with Bar but eventually made it back to civvy street where he spent his later years battling alcohol, which he had turned to as a way of coping with his war. He put up quite a fight: he used to retreat to a remote cottage which I've visited, but he died in his 50s. Another photo of him from the 40s or fifties shows his physical deterioration. The effect of war goes on long after the guns cease to fire.

He wasn't officer class: the impact of making the decisions to send men on unwinnable missions must have had an effect all of its own.

It's also worth remembering that we owe a debt to the people of those times in terms of medical advances that were made. I'm not knowledgeable about the geographical or political history, but I remember reading about the development of plastic surgery. In the C19th, you could die of a broken limb because infection could set in. Yet when I broke an arm, the complex break was fixed and I got back almost total function (a slight loss of power on diagonal stretches, possibly due to surgery going through muscles which then had to be put back together again). The ability to do that came on the back of surgeons learning to put men back together after war injuries.

And to return to Dorothy L Sayers. One of Lord Peter's lines that's always stuck with me was 'The first thing a principle does, if it really is a principle, is to kill someone'. I can't find it on an Internet search so I may have misremembered. Does anyone have a clue?

alicef

I have bought dye - but haven't progressed further with the dressing gown.  I have become distracted by a set of pillow cases I picked up in a charity shop some while ago  - the material is 'Rosalie' and I'm thinking camisole perhaps.  

Completely agree on Edward Petheridge's exemplary Wimsey.   

A blog I follow has suggested 'Patricia Wentworth' Miss Silver series,  as a good 'curl up' read - I haven't come across any of her books so any suggestions welcome! .   

PipneyJane

Cherryfudge said:

Great points, @Laura_Elsewhere and @PipneyJane.

My paternal grandfather, who I never met, served in WW1. I have a photo of him as a dashing young thing and he had an 'interesting' war. According to my Dad he was promoted and demoted a number of times as he was quite impetuous. I wonder now if he may have been neurodiverse. He was awarded the Military Cross with Bar but eventually made it back to civvy street where he spent his later years battling alcohol, which he had turned to as a way of coping with his war. He put up quite a fight: he used to retreat to a remote cottage which I've visited, but he died in his 50s. Another photo of him from the 40s or fifties shows his physical deterioration. The effect of war goes on long after the guns cease to fire.

He wasn't officer class: the impact of making the decisions to send men on unwinnable missions must have had an effect all of its own.

It's also worth remembering that we owe a debt to the people of those times in terms of medical advances that were made. I'm not knowledgeable about the geographical or political history, but I remember reading about the development of plastic surgery. In the C19th, you could die of a broken limb because infection could set in. Yet when I broke an arm, the complex break was fixed and I got back almost total function (a slight loss of power on diagonal stretches, possibly due to surgery going through muscles which then had to be put back together again). The ability to do that came on the back of surgeons learning to put men back together after war injuries.

And to return to Dorothy L Sayers. One of Lord Peter's lines that's always stuck with me was 'The first thing a principle does, if it really is a principle, is to kill someone'. I can't find it on an Internet search so I may have misremembered. Does anyone have a clue?

@Cherryfudge   I’m 99% certain that your quote is from either Whose Body or Clouds of Witness and my money is on the latter. I’m only 6 chapters into Unnatural Death but, after a quick scan of what I’ve read so far, I don’t think it’s from there.  (I’m 99% certain that it is from Clouds of Witness and forms part of a discussion between Peter and Parker, possibly about Lady Mary.)

- Pip

PipneyJane

alicef said:

I have bought dye - but haven't progressed further with the dressing gown.  I have become distracted by a set of pillow cases I picked up in a charity shop some while ago  - the material is 'Rosalie' and I'm thinking camisole perhaps.  

Completely agree on Edward Petheridge's exemplary Wimsey.   

A blog I follow has suggested 'Patricia Wentworth' Miss Silver series,  as a good 'curl up' read - I haven't come across any of her books so any suggestions welcome! .   

@alicef I have several Miss Silver books upstairs.  Haven’t read them since the 1990’s, so I can’t tell you specific details, but the fact that I have more than one is a sign that they’re a good read.  My only memories are that Miss Silver is a knitter and a bit like Miss Marple.  (I changed jobs in 1999 and could no longer commute by train, which killed my reading time.)

- Pip

Cherryfudge

PipneyJane said:

@Cherryfudge   I’m 99% certain that your quote is from either Whose Body or Clouds of Witness and my money is on the latter. I’m only 6 chapters into Unnatural Death but, after a quick scan of what I’ve read so far, I don’t think it’s from there.  (I’m 99% certain that it is from Clouds of Witness and forms part of a discussion between Peter and Parker, possibly about Lady Mary.)

- Pip

Thank you! I'm now re-reading Clouds of Witness.  

Cherryfudge

And going back to what we were saying the other day (and completely off-topic for the thread in general, so please ignore if you aren't down this particular rabbit hole), on reading the above I came across the word 'refection' and wondered if it were a misprint for 'reflection'. I looked it up and came across this glorious conglomeration of words which essentially mean one thing but have nuances to keep us on our toes:

Whether you sit down for nourishment or sustenance, aliment or pabulum, a meal or a repast, you are unlikely to encounter a shortage of English words for food or the partaking of food. Refection is just such a word...

Synonyms: chow, feed, meal, menu, mess, repast, table

From Merriam-Webster.com.

I'm enjoying reading the book again, thanks Pip!

Laura_Elsewhere

Cherryfudge said:

And to return to Dorothy L Sayers. One of Lord Peter's lines that's always stuck with me was 'The first thing a principle does, if it really is a principle, is to kill someone'. I can't find it on an Internet search so I may have misremembered. Does anyone have a clue?

It's from 'Gaudy Night' when they go out for dinner and he can't pick up her napkin because of his broken ribs.

"Now that you have the age of national self-realization, the age of colonial expansion, the age of barbarian invasions and the age of the decline and fall, all jammed cheek by jowl in time and space, all armed alike with poison-gas and going through the outward motions of an advanced civilization, principles have become more dangerous than passions. It’s getting uncommonly easy to kill people in large numbers, and the first thing a principle does — if it really is a principle — is to kill somebody"