70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

We have been having some lovely weather recently. The early part of this month was very hot with the S.W. monsoon wind blowing. As our room faces East there was little or no air moving in the room and the nights were very hot. Vera, bless her, lent us a beautiful green sheet which saved us sleeping on a hot blanket. Actually, Yvonne had put both our mintois into one cover and had cut the other cover, thus making two sheets, albeit somewhat stained by marks from the floor and the red cement skirting to the room. In the humid weather the moisture condensed on these skirtings and the red came off onto anything that touched it.

At the beginning of the month the moon was full, giving a brilliant light: we could see quite clearly all the islands to sea. Yvonne and I decided we would try sleeping up on the flat roof of our block, for although the S.W. wind was blowing the weather seemed to have set fair. We carted up all our blankets, the mintois and our green sheet, selected a suitable spot and made our bed, puttiwng all but one blanket under the mintois to make the bed as soft as possible. There was a lovely breeze blowing on the roof and it was much cooler than in our room; in fact, in the early morning we were quite glad to put a blanket over us. We watched the enormous moon rise out of the sea……it looked the size of a house. By the time we were in bed the moon was so bright that it rather kept me awake. Then we were wakened at about 7 in the morning by the sun. There is so much power in the sun at this time of year that it made us begin to perspire soon after it had risen and we too had to rise, though usually we stay in bed until 8 a.m.  

There were two or three other couples on the roof as well, so we selected our own bay, formed by chimney stacks and water tanks and left our bedding up there all day in the sun. On the third night I woke up at about 11 or 12 o’clock and saw clouds rolling up. We did not know whether to risk it or not, but when another couple set the example and took up their beds and walked, we decided to follow suit, for it would have been an awful scramble getting down the cat ladder to the second floor with our bedding. The Fortescues had moved to our bed (which was in a cooler corner of the room than theirs, so we quietly made up our bed on theirs and safely ensconced ourselves. We had hardly got into bed when down came the rain! We pictured the scramble of the others still on the roof. Just then Marjorie woke up and said to Tim,

“It’s raining, we’d better get our bed ready for the Charters”. 

Tim staggered out of bed half asleep and came over to us. He looked hard and then said, 

“They seem to be here already!”

We had a day or two of real monsoon rain and then the wind veered to the East or South East bringing cooler and much drier weather which has lasted up to date. I don’t mind high temperatures at all when the atmosphere is dry; in fact I quite enjoy hot, dry weather; but the damp heat of the monsoon weather is terribly trying and enervating.