Had quarter of a typhoid injection.
Good porridge! Minced meat today.
Cold again.
Barbara Anslow's diary: View pages
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Spotted dick but other food not so good. Mum had bread ration instead of rice, she isn't too well.
Meat and bread pudding.
Mrs Hawkett agitating to come back in room. ((Mrs Connie Hawkett was an ANS colleague of Mum's who had originally occupied the room with us, but soon after she found a better billet.))
Cookers gave out, therefore no porridge... great loss.
Tonight we cooked porridge on chatty in room - not bad. ((Chatty a makeshift affair in the empty fireplace in our room.))
Managed to make porridge in evening on chatty ((with more of the doll's house as fuel.)) Lovely meat pie for tiffin - with real pastry.
Had last of TAB inoculation, good for 18 months. Morning off. We cooked porridge in evening and had some cold in morning.
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.))
Dorothy Deakin & some Colonial Secretary's staff arrived in camp (some already here).
Talk that Sir Antony Eden had mentioned conditions here, and said we would have to put up with it but food would be sent.
Didn't sleep well because of Mrs. G's candle.
Mum and I went to Confession.
Mum and I to Confession yesterday, and to Holy Communion this morning.
((Most of the RC priests were American - Maryknoll Fathers, and there was one young Canadian priest, Father Murphy. Confessions were heard on Saturdays in the billet of two of the Fathers – an ex-amah's room. During the week Confessions were also heard before a short morning Mass in the Prison Officers' Club where the priest sat sideways on a chair which had a piece of material on its back to give a semblance of privacy, before which one knelt for Confession.))
New rumour is that we are bound for Shanghai.
Nice meat roll today.
Colder.
I'm now at stage where I could eat more rice than I get.
Concert tonight, Irish history, grand: Eileen Grant is very clever. Mum and Olive are staying on to dance.
Dorothy Deakin says meals at Bowen Road Hosp. are porridge, plenty of tea, meat and bread and jam. I had lovely meat roll today.
Mum and I had a grand walk. Saw poor body on rocks. ((It had been there a long time - believed to be a soldier, no one could get to it because there was barbed wire round all the beaches)).
Gave Miss Hill ((a young nursing sister)) her first shorthand lesson.
Mrs. G. went to hospital at night - gallstones.
Still no glasses and no Mabel.
Cholera inoc.
Fried bread in peanut oil in a sardine tin - delicious. Staff in Hospital Office to be increased. ((A daily report of patients in camp hospital, and of births and deaths, required by Japanese.))
Egg ration today - Mum and I boiled ours.
Up early for Canteen, but I let family down by not getting up early ENOUGH. ((This means I was at the end of the queue and so little choice of foodstuffs left.))
Heard Military Hospital nurses are doing quite well, food and amenity-wise.
Got weighed. I'm 101 and half lbs (from 112). Olive has gained 2 lbs. ((rice fat)). She is to work at hospital office too.
