Spam Tomorrow by Verily Anderson #DeanStreetDecember23

Title: Spam Tomorrow
Author: Verily Anderson (1915-2010)
Publication: Dean Street Press/Furrowed Middlebrow, 

paperback, originally published in 1956
Genre: Memoir
Setting: WWII England

Description: Verily grew up in a slightly eccentric family in southern England, one of five children of a well-born vicar. His skill as a breeder of fox terriers paid for boarding school and other necessities for a large family not covered by a clergyman’s salary. After emerging from school without any skills or career goals, Verily experimented with being a “nursery-maid, a governess, a chauffeuse, a scene-shifter, a ballet dancer’s dresser, and then . . . tried to emigrate to Canada.” She was also presented at court. 

However, when World War II comes along, she becomes unexpectedly patriotic and in 1939 enlisted with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), wanting to be in the middle of things. As it turns out, she dislikes authority figures and is always in trouble. At about the same time, through a cousin, she has met her future husband, Donald. He is very congenial but quite a bit older and poor, so her family does not approve but eventually Verily marries him anyway, during the summer of 1940, abandoning her FANY position and opting instead for motherhood and making homes out of hand-me-downs for Donald (when he isn’t in London working for the Home Office) and her growing family. Most of the book is about her rollicking adventures as a young parent during the war, based on detailed diaries she kept her whole life. 

My Impression: So pleased that Liz of Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home is again celebrating Dean Street December, reviews from the small press that has brought us so many delightful reprints.  I bought this book the minute it was available due to Scott from Furrowed Middlebrow’s description but somehow had not got around to reading it. It’s a sort of Love in a Cold Climate meets The Egg and I, a memoir full of improbable but amusing adventures, featuring Verily and friends, family members, and occasionally even paying guests so she can reduce her husband’s overdraft and buy groceries.

I am fascinated by stories from the home front and this is an unusual portrayal of an unapologetic mother, who did her bit driving army vehicles for a while but chafed at the disorganization and time spent waiting around for assignments, and gladly escaped to embrace married life.

During an early daylight raid I became one of the first casualties to be treated by the first-aid post set up in the garage under Berkeley Square. I was making shepherd’s pie in our small kitchen, carefully following the recipe book because I had never learnt to cook before I was married. A bomb dropped some way off. The vibration caused a heavy saucepan to bounce off a high shelf; it hit and broke a beer bottle on a lower shelf, which then fell on my head.

In one of my favorite parts, Verily is busy preparing for a large christening for her daughter, trying to host everyone who wasn’t invited to her wartime wedding, especially her family and her in-laws who have not yet met. Instead, she collapses with some sort of puerperal fever and is carried away by ambulance while her best friend has to manage the christening and all the guests, plus her own baby and Verily’s.  Her deadpan description of this obviously stressful incident makes this very amusing.

I still prefer my WWII books to be about dedicated Wrens or cryptologists but this was a fun and different read.  I will keep my eyes open for more by this author, forced to be prolific when her husband died and left her with five children.  And although this is nonfiction, I am counting it as part of Marg's Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Source: Personal copy

Happy holidays to all!  I've been busy with a project so have not trimmed my Christmas tree and my library books are piling up, but I have three days off and a quiet few days in the office next week to which I look forward.