““Had they known how life would become a dark, narrow hole in which they would sleep less than they ever thought possible, hardly ever see a horizon without smoke or fire corroding its edges, eat turnips and potatoes that have been boiled into a bitter white mash at nearly every meal, they might have enjoyed even more those empty days that began with overly salted sausage and sweet jam, were filled with long walks across tangled, abandoned vines and beneath thick groves of apple trees, and ended with cognac, a piece of Toblerone, and the BBC on the wireless.””
