Monday, January 12, 2009

The knitted bride and groom...

I have been doing lots of knitting lately as I find it very relaxing and found this sweet little pair while I was looking through files from a recent wedding shoot - aren't they lovely? I am just about able to knit teacosies - that's my limit!

My head is full of other people's words at the moment. I have been watching the BBC dramatisation of "The Diary of Anne Frank" and also a long documentary called "Anne Frank remembered". I have also been reading the diaries of Nella Last - "housewife, 49" which covers the second world war and some time afterwards.

Like so many girls I read Anne Frank's diary when I was about 13. I was amazed at how her words expressed my own feelings better than I could myself - about growing up, parents, boys and the future. I always felt if we'd known each other, Anne and I would have been "best friends". I wonder how many other girls felt that - still feel it - on reading Anne's words for the first time?

Sian watched some of the BBC programme with me and expressed her own surprise at how "stroppy" and "moody" and "argumentative" Anne was! Just your typical teenage girl growing up and trying to make sense of life - albeit in extraordinary circumstances!

Now I'm middle-aged and reading Nella Last's diaries, I feel as if I've found another "best friend!". Looking at the photos of Nella, you would never guess that under her placid and conventional exterior there was a passionate individual with so many hopes and dreams and ideals all fighting for dominance. What she has in common with Anne I think is the feeling that no-one really knows the real person beyond the facade she shows to the world. I think both writers felt a great sense of isolation and that writing was a way to somehow try to make sense of everything whirling around in their heads so much of the time.

I've just read on another blog "is there any place where I can truly be me?" I know that thought goes through MY mind often - although I'm lucky in that I have a husband who knows me as well as another human can know someone else! Sometimes I'm not sure how I can be "me" if I'm not really sure yet who "me" really is!

3 comments:

Akelamalu said...

I watched 'The Diary of Ann Frank' too, I thought it was exellently done. 'Housewife 49' was dramatised too, it starred Victoria Wood - did you see it?

photowannabe said...

Well, I like the "me" that you show us through your blog. Your husband sounds like a solid rock for you to hold on to. That's a wonderful attribute.

picperfic said...

That Housewife 49 was a dramatisation staring Victoria Wood...I loved watching it. I too watched Anne Frank's diary with a passion, it was an interesting dramatisation and I have watched about three different versions now, all different. I even visited their house in Amsterdam a few years ago and sniveled my way around it, so sad...