Hold This Moment… and Make a Note of It

By Rosemary Johnson

Mention the Br-word and you’ll clear any room in the UK within seconds.  So says everybody.  We’re all sick and tired of hearing about Brexit.  Hold these thoughts and make a note of them.  Who knows what people will be saying even a few months ahead?

Times are troubled, and changing all the time.  We don’t know what’s going to happen days ahead, even hours ahead.  It’s tempting to hide one’s head in the sand, because it’s scary.  (It is.)  And to be bored with it.  (It’s very boring.)  We take sides.  Several ACW members are posting on Twitter in support of the Remain camp.  Nobody wants to own up to supporting Brexit.  Remember this too.

Hold on to the term ‘Remoaner’, whatever your political persuasion.  If you write historical fiction, you will have spent hours looking up colloquial phrases in parlance during the period you’re writing about.

Write down the name ‘Laura Kuenssberg’ – in a year or two’s time you’ll have forgotten who she was.  Older readers, can you remember who made the television announcements about the sinking of various ships during the Falklands War in 1982?  (Ian McDonald.  He was much talked about at the time, for his lugubrious manner and sepulchral voice, a televised Grim Reader.)

All historians place a high value on primary sources – artefacts, documents, recordings or any sources of information created at the time under study, because these are likely to be more accurate and authentic than anything else.  Don’t let’s ignore the resources that are under our noses.  You may not be planning to write about Brexit, but your notes could become another writer’s – a historical writer’s - primary source.

The course of political events will be charted in newspapers, in BBC news bulletins posted on YouTube, in Hansard and political commentaries online and in print.   But we ordinary folks living now are in the best position to note down opinions, hopes and fears of the Great British public, what they believe to be true, how much they know and understand.

Of course, we must also pray, committing these troubled days to God.  He has us in His hand, as he did in the Old Testament and the New.  We must pray for His wisdom for all in authority, that they may work for justice and the common good.  Laughable?  Impossible?  God’s rather good at the impossible.

(With apologies to ACW overseas members, whose lives will not be dominated by this one topic as are ours in the UK.) 

Rosemary is a history graduate.  She is carrying out the final edits for a modern historical novel based during the Solidarity era in Poland and planning to submit it to novel competitions.  She has also recently had an article about carrying out research for historical fiction published in Together magazine.