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Transcription

[Page] 91
[continued from page 90]

Rumour has it that the balloons were
brought from Glasgow, and also that, since
Monday's performance, our anti-air craft
batteries have been supplied with guns
of a later pattern than they possessed.
Before the war, certainly among the public,
it was thought unlikely that the North would
be much raided. It looks as if the authorities
had held similar ideas!

23rd Oct. 1939
Shortly after 12. o'clock today when I was at work in
the garden, I heard the 'warble' of the sirens and so
summoned the household to the shelter. We are
getting quite accustomed to air. raid warnings,
so we are no longer flustered by them. There is instead
irritation at the interruption in the day's work, which
they cause. Catherine instead of being nervous today
seemed only to fear that the pheasant for lunch,
in process of being cooked, might be spoiled!
That there is need to take shelter was quite apparent
to me when the Director of the Royal Scottish Museum
showed part of a shell case and smaller piece
of iron that fell through the glass roof of the Museum
in Monday's raid. We had only a short
imprisonment in the shelter today and heard no
firing.

28th. Oct. 1939.
This was a lovely autumn morning after a night
on which there had been a few degrees of frost and a
shower of hail, the 'stones' from which still lay here and
there in the shade, when I went out before breakfast as
usual to open my houses. Just as I was reading
my 'Scotsman' after breakfast I was disturbed by a
noise like the rough movement of furniture overhead,
so much so that I put my head out into the hall
and asked what it was - 'Guns' said Catherine,
'No' said Margaret, but when I went outside
I realised that 'guns' it was, but far distant in
the east. They must have been the new type of guns
recently. brought here from the South. The explosion
seemed a double one - Could it have been the noise of
a shell leaving the gun and its explosion.
The 1. o'clock bulletin brought the explanation,
'a German reconnaissance 'plane brought
down near Dalkeith. This is really a
most interesting place to live in, and we are
so used to 'have alarms' that they don't really
alarm us any more.
As this journal may be of interest to Christian
Margaret sometime in the distant future, when
wars are no more and peace, justice & mercy
have been established on the earth, she may like
to know what she herself was like at this date.
[continued on page 92]

  Transcribers who have contributed to this page.

Jane F Jamieson, Moira L- Moderator