10 Feb 1942, John Charter's wartime journal

This diary cannot keep to dates. I must go back and write an account of the brief war here; and then later, a year old account of our wedding; and later still a somewhat hazy account of the two delightful weeks I spent in Ceylon with Mother and Father. At present my manual labour (supervising and bricklaying for our new communal kitchen) keeps me very busy during the day, and as we are blacked out and it gets dark at about 7:30, there is at present little time left for writing a diary.

The weather has suddenly become very much colder. The thermometer at St Stephens School registered 36’ F (2.2C) which seems almost too low to be accurate, but with insufficient food and no heating whatsoever, added to the fact that HK summers considerably thin one’s blood, conditions are certainly rather miserable at present.

We hear an important announcement affecting the European community is to be made on 15th February, Sunday. Everyone is full of conjecture as to what this order will be; the most popular theory being that we will be allowed back to our homes. We wonder if this would be to our advantage as the price of food now is exorbitant and so far we have heard no news of being able to withdraw any money from the banks. Here we do get some food, even though it is only half as much as we could eat.