Jenny Wren, Jenny Wren
Losing patience yet again
Should your husband dare to rest
Instead of building you that nest....
the one you'll choose from several made....
the best in which your eggs are laid 
So panic not....it wont be long
He's starting now to sing his song
Just cast about and make your choice
To the glorious rhythms of his voice

(Daisy W, June 1940)

The Summer of 1940 was a particularly worrying time for the people of Great Britain…the German invasion of Europe was all but complete, the name “Dunkirk” was on everyone’s lips and barely thirty miles of English Channel separated British soil from overwhelming Nazi invasion!

Still only in her mid-teens, my Mum was living at home in the old country cottage with my Gran and Grandad together with her many brothers and sisters. Two of her maternal uncles, both serving with the 2nd Battalion The Gloucestershire Regiment, had been wounded at Dunkirk, but had been successfully returned to England in the first wave while the rest of their Battalion had remained behind to provide screen cover for the main bulk of the evacuation.The eventual safe return of my Mum’s uncles to British shores was, quite naturally, of enormous relief to the entire family….even though they didn’t actually get back to their families as such until several weeks later. Nevertheless, this must have been a time for my Mum to be relatively thankful, even as two more uncles and all of her brothers prepared to enlist in the Forces themselves!Interestingly, the War years were when my Mum’s poetry writing was at its most prolific….but always on the subject of Nature. She never once wrote a poem about the War itself, about friends or family serving in either Europe or Asia or at sea or about the harsh times experienced by all those around her. For my Mother, Nature must have been a desperately important means of escape from the awful reality of life under seige! The “Jenny’s Choice” poem was based upon her own observations of a pair of Wrens nesting in my Gran’s garden. She noticed that the male bird built several prototype “cock” nests before the hen finally decided to choose one, at which point the little female would line it with moss, feathers and/or down to finish it off!