Grandad’s Diary. 26th February – 2nd March 1945

Entries for week beginning 25th March 1945

26th February. Bad stomach detached from flight to wing. Everybody looking out for Soir de Paris scent but all bought up.

27th February. Suppose next supplies will be dearer. Plenty of Doodies falling near. Awful suspense waiting to see where thing falls and waiting for it to cut out.

28th February. New falls affect nerves for short periods. One fell on sites killing 5 in farmhouse.

1st-2nd March. Fair bit of business this week. Tiger bargainers these people. Bought and bartered plenty of eggs. Peculiar how market has demand for certain items for so long, then changes to other items. People undercutting mob, themselves and others.

Grandad is increasingly merging entries acorss days in his diary, making it difficult to work out when he has written each entry, hence some of the above confusion. I’m just making my best guess.

Again in these posts we see the contrast during life at war. One one day, Grandad is trying to buy some of the famous ‘Soir de Paris’ (Evening in Paris) scent, invented by perfumer Ernest Beaux in 1928, discontinued in 1969 and then relaunched in 1992. On another day he learns of 5 deaths killed by a Doodlebug in a farmhouse at a site which is suppsoed to be protected by one of Grandad’s barrage balloons. It must have been very difficult to live in a time of such contrasts.

Grandad’s Diary. 13-14th February 1945

Entry for 13-14 Feb

Surprising number of farms hit by doodle bugs. Little girl here Marie wonderful warning for V bombs. Dashes away long before we hear them. Most kiddies similar. Eggs from farms 3 for soap go 7 fumes each. Met P. Highfield and G. Kendal

There is an interesting observation in this entry that the sharp hearing of most children was good enough to give a warning for incoming V1 flying bombs.

Given the random, untargeted nature of the V1, the fact that so many farms had been hit by them indicated just how many had been sent to hit Belgium once London was out of range.

I think I haven’t quite translated the penultimate sentence correctly – Grandad seems to be saying that he can barter eggs from the farm in which his is billeted for soap and cigarettes (fumes), but I’m not sure of this, because I cannot find any indication that ‘fumes’ was a slang for cigarettes.

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