Coronavirus diary, Thursday 9 April

What a complicated world we live in. All our lives have changed, probably never to be the same again. It is a dangerous world. Everyone is at risk, a frightening experience for young and old, intensified by uncertainty. 

Burnaby Street, Cardiff

We of the older generation have the advantage of experience, of equally dark days. When I look back on 150 years of my family history, the Skinners and the Dymonds, I take comfort from the way they coped with their changing world. When the Dymond family left Pembroke Dock, West Wales, in the late 19th century, looking forward to a new life they chose Splott, an ugly name for a not too pretty neighbourhood of Cardiff, overshadowed by one of the city's steelworks. They bought a terraced house, 50 Burnaby Street, and settled down happily. 

Their first child, Gwendoline, my mother, was born on 22 April 1891, followed by five more children: three boys and two girls. Just the life they had planned. But my grandfather died suddenly. With her mother Fanny incapable of looking after them, Gwen, at 16, had to take over, helped by her oldest brother Walter. It was a struggle, but the family carried on bravely. My mother was also working in a butcher's shop and all my uncles were attending evening classes. 

The Skinner brothers in the Great War. Frank, left, survived to become Bob's father

Just as suddenly as ours did in 1939, their life and world changed dramatically and sadly with the outbreak of the first world war. The three Dymond brothers went off, probably influenced by the 'Your country needs you' appeal by Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, the secretary of state for war, on the iconic recruiting poster. They all returned home from the trenches in France but Bob, the youngest, suffered all his life from being gassed. 

Our family did more than just survive. It flourished. All three boys had successful careers, two in business in Cardiff and George as a journalist. Bob became an accountant and Mum a book-keeper. My father Frank's family, who came from Blagdon, a Somerset village, fared worse. Frank had an identical twin brother, so alike they could even substitute for each other at work in London. They served in the war, Dad in the Dardanelles and his brother in France, where he survived the trenches only to die of the Spanish flu pandemic in November 1918. Another brother was killed in action. It is hard to imagine how the grandparents and parents dealt with the fear and uncertainty of those desperate war years. But they did, they survived and their experience helped my generation in the next world crisis, the second world war. 

Bob's maternal grandmother

When war broke out in 1939, I was living with my mother, father, brother and sister in London. I was a teenager in my second year at Emanuel School, Wandsworth. My brother, who turned 18 years old the day Hitler invaded Poland, had just started work with the British Automatic Company (BAC), which had chocolate vending machines on our railway stations, with penny bars of Nestlé. Within a month he was called up, serving for six years in the RAF. In London, I helped my father set up our Anderson shelter in the back garden of our maisonette. 

The break up of the Skinner family, as with families throughout the country, came with my sister being evacuated with her school to Surrey while I, instead of going with my school to Hampshire, went to my mother's family in Splott, Cardiff. I was in the Burnaby Street house on Sunday 3 September when war was declared. 

Dorothy, Bert and Bob early in the war

After leaving Cardiff High School at 16, I worked as a reporter on the Penarth Times before being called up late in the war for army service. Those war years took a heavy toll on the family, however. Back home after a year in Cardiff, in 1940 I watched the Spitfires and Messerschmitts in the Battle of Britain from my wartime school grounds in south west London, and immediately afterwards the brutal bombing campaign. We spent hours in our shelter every night for two months that autumn. 

My mother being ill, we moved permanently to Cardiff abd a house in Cathays. We were never together again as a family. 

Brothers in arms: Bob and Bert

After leaving Cardiff High School at 16, I worked as a reporter on the Penarth Times before being called up late in the war for army service. Those war years took a heavy toll on the family. My father, worn out by work - during the war he was a crane driver on a wharf on the Thames - died suddenly in 1942 at 52 years of age. My brother was in Canada. I was reporting in a police court in Penarth when I was called home a month after starting my first job. A terrible day at a terrible time. But, like the Dymond family nearly one hundred years ago, we survived.