13 May 1942, John Charter's wartime journal

My outburst about Cressal, on reading it later, seems somewhat unworthy and perhaps uncalled for; I am not usually given to back-biting or derogatory imputations but as this is a private diary and is not written for publication I will let it stand. Perhaps I am becoming somewhat irritable and morose and this may account for my hard words!

Incidentally I have become very irritable since I came to this camp. Things seem to be a bother to do - it seems an awful fag to go visiting one’s friends - and sometimes I feel snappy for no particular reason at all. The doctors say this is largely due to the lack of fats in one’s diet. The pork, while it lasted, had a fair amount of fat on it, but the buffalow that we now get - which is extremely well beaten and tough! - has no fat at all, and the only fat we do get is our one teaspoonful of butter that we have each day from the community store. Incidentally the butter has now come to an end and we are half way through our one and only 2 lb tin of margarine. Still, it has done well to last us for four months: a little looting goes a long way! Yvonne remains very cheerful though at times she too feels a bit under the weather. She must find me difficult to get on with some times. However, I am by no means pessimistic. Lots of things have happened lately.  

The beastly, sticky and damp Hong Kong Spring weather has descended upon us now, with heavy rain and sultry moist days. Really we have been lucky with the weather this year: it has remained comparatively cool till the beginning of May and is not yet uncomfortably hot. But this morning the rain poured down upon us, turning the worn out bits of lawn and grass plots into morasses. Now, all the landscape is of silver light on the grey sea, white foam about the black rocks and filmy white mists wreathing and curling and whisping up the dark and bleak hillsides to the flat grey ceiling of the sky. When the sun shines on a sunnier day, the sea takes on a vivid blue and distant stuccoed houses look bright and cheerful. Stanley really is a charming spot - were it not for this damnable internment and these millions of other people about! 

The other evening we strolled up to Barton’s (or ‘C’) bungalow as we often do to visit Minnie. It was a simply perfect evening, full of soft golden light with smokey blues and greys of the sea, headlands and hills and the soft orange clouds of the setting sun. A gentle breeze was blowing and we longed to be out again in a slender white sailed yacht.  Still - one day we keep saying!