Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Bloggers from the Dawn of Time

Last night I finally got around to watching my recording of Victoria Wood's Housewife, 49. The play was moving, uplifting, informative, Threlfall excellent etc etc, and Nella Last was a very early blogger.

The Mass Observation project, started in 1937, wanted to record the daily lives of British citizens, largely in the form of diaries kept by volunteers and sent in to the central office. Nella Last started her blog - sorry, diary - in 1939, in response to an advert. I gather this was far less in response to the outbreak of war than to her own impending (at least second) breakdown. In a very closeted home life, dominated by husband and sons, she had no-one with which to share the details of her life, and so put them all into this diary, which she sent off to Mass Ob.

And blimey o'riley if it didn't turn her life right round. She found the courage to stand up to her husband, practically take over the WVS and bridge the class divide between those who had telephones and those who *gasp* didn't.

First Nations has talked eloquently about the difference between a diary and a blog, and how blogging has changed her life. Nella didn't have a 'comments' button, but just knowing she was going to be listened to made all the difference.

3 comments:

realdoc said...

I thought about blogging when I read about that Victoria Wood thing.

I, Like The View said...

oh g*d! I wrote about this a while ago (*wishes she had already learnt the html thing to link straight back to her archives*) when someone showed me a newspaper article about blogging

won't rabbit on here (much as I'm tempted)(and oh, I am so sorely tempted)

all I shall say (she writes, submitting to temptation) is that

no no no

I shan't say it - you're spared

(wish I'd seen the programme, then I'd be able to make a sensible eloquent comment like realdoc)

cello said...

Yes, I too watched it only this weekend and thought it a very fine effort. David Threlfall is such a class act and Victoria Wood made a very moving Nella. I couldn't quite dismiss images of her doing the comic routine thing, but she has always had a tragic sub-text in my opinion.