9 Mar 1942, Barbara Anslow's diary
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Warmer.
Lots of hard work in office - census.
Soon our little stock of firewood (Marina Kingdon's doll's house) will be finished, and that will be the end of the porridge. ((We found that the Kingdon family had pre-war occupied the flat of which our room was part. Mr Kingdon was in camp but family evacuated to Australia.)) Meantime we are cooking 2 lots of porridge at night so as not to waste the fire once started, and eat some cold in morning.
I still haven't got my glasses back.
Mum has written to Dr Selwyn Clarke (H'Kong's Director of Medical Services, not yet interned) to try to get Mabel here with us. Over 3 months since we've seen her. It seems a shame to bring her here to this food if she is getting better food where she is.
Bread ration has slumped - it no longer comes direct to us, but via the Chinese Chief Supervisor. (bread was sent into camp ready-cooked). Mum has been eating more rice. I still bring her some of any extras we get at hospital in evening.
Olive now a kitchen worker and sometimes gets extra food, though she is generous to Mum with it.
In spare time at work I've been copying out shorthand phrases etc. from Dorothy Holloway's Pitmans book, so that will be something to learn if Dorothy and the book aren't always at hand.
Canteen still functioning, but prices colossal. Sugar $1.50 a pound, 20 toffees for $1 etc, and we have to save some of our little remaining precious money for my glasses' frames.
Often dream of going back to our flat and trying to rescue various things, but the general idea is that there's nothing left in our homes - not even the floorboards. Lately I've been thinking a lot about some lovely Christmases at Gillingham ((where grandmother and aunts lived)) – the Christmas tree, and the evening draw for the pink sugar mice etc. on it, and eating nuts and figs and dates all the time.
Today's paper mentions repatriation for the Americans, and that it may be a matter of arrangement for the British. Some think it is out of the question. Others seem to think we will just be released from internment and left to our own devices.
Went to dentist (Shields) but he said he can't find anything wrong (despite aching). ((Mr Shields was a private dentist. There was also a Govt. one, Dr. Lanchester. Both functioned as best they could with what things they'd been able to bring into camp. Their 'surgery' was the only part of the Married Quarters which had been damaged during the fighting - a devastated ground floor room which no one wanted to live in, there were no facilities for major repairs in camp. In 2002 there was a photo in one of the national newspaper Literary Supplements, of Dr Lanchester attending to an internee in that very surgery, with Nursing Sister Mary Rose in attendance.
This photo was reproduced because a grandson of Dr Lanchester had just published a novel called 'Fragrant Harbour' set in Hong Kong, both in war days and in the present.))
