Cigs, anyone?

After two nights of German bombing raids (March 1941) on a town near Glasgow, in which nearly every house was damaged:

Along with food, "2 tons of candles and about 6,000 boxes of matches were sent to Clydebank… About 70,000 cigarettes and 15 lbs. of tobacco were also supplied"

Good to know the essentials are sorted...

Fair Dinkim

Today's diary entry, Jan 1944, by a Scottish solicitor:

"I am becoming more selfish, more bad-tempered, less public-spirited, with less belief in my fellow-man. A previously non-existent dislike of the English, and the Australians (whom I did not know before but find even more full than the English of what they call "bull-shit"...)

Ha ha!! Well they do say solicitors have good skills in reading people....

Invalid's Diet

How's this for wartime diet of someone who was off work, ill? 

Breakfast - bran and hot milk, steamed haddock, toast, marmalade, tea.Lunch - vegetable soup, mince, carrots, mashed potatoes, white sauce, stewed apples and custard, coffee.Tea - macaroni and cheese souffle, brown bread, pancakes and jam, tea.

Jan 1943, Scotland.

Hungry?

A Scottish journalist complains about censorship, 1/7/40:

 "A French journalist had to write columns of cheerful and boot-licking drivel [to get passed by the censor]... If he had given a gruesome account in four columns of how the starving Germans had started eating babies, the censorship would have passed it, though it would not have passed the slightest reference to the shortage of sugar in Paris..."

Get awa'!

From the diary of a medical student in Edinburgh:

"Held a conversation with Mrs J.G (no fixed abode, age “God, I’m far too old”), who greeted me with “Get awa’, ye cock-eyed bastard’…” (2/9/39)

(Note to self: new greeting for door-knockers??)

On the Razzle!

From Jimmy, age 6:

"While Dad was overseas in the RAF, my mother was enjoying herself so much that she went out on the razzle at nights, whilst I was left alone at home"
Later on, still during the war, his parents divorced and his father "took up" with a WREN while his mother started seeing a GI. No wonder the Kirk was concerned about the breakdown in traditional family structures!