gb0551ms-33-92

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[page] 92
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After spending the first three months of
her life with her Mowbray parents near Sevenoaks
she was to come here with her mother and
pay us a lengthy visit. However, the political
situation steadily deteriorated, and after being
here only a week, it was decided that a
more 'healthy' place would be more suitable
for an infant, so she and her mother went
off one Sunday afternoon to a farm house
near Harden, in the Hawick neighbourhood.
Having left that, at the end of a month, she
has been transferred to 'The Loaning' Peebles,
a nice little place belonging to a very old
friend of mine, Prof. [Professor] Bryce, a widower, and
now a martyr to rheumatism. So Christian
you are safe in a lovely, healthy, environ:
:ment providing interest to a lonely old
man. You are a perfect baby. Always in the
best of health and so with a happy disposition
and cheeks like rosey apples.

29th Oct. 1939.
The guns we heard yesterday were not so remote
as I fancied, for today talking to a Romanes, who
lives at the bottom of the Avenue, on the way back from Church.
he informed me that they were firing at the plane. when
above us here, and that shrapnel fell on the golf course
and in the village. Quite possibly it fell here too!

4th Nov. 1939
We have had no raids or warnings for a week.
The 'plane, which caused the sensation last week,
was driven down in the foothills of the Lammermuirs
near Gifford. Two of the occupants were dead, one
wounded, and the pilot unscaithed
In great contrast to the last war on the
break out of this one, the country was almost
over organised, and great preparations were
made for evacuating women and children
from certain dangerous urban areas, on which
bombing raids. following Nazi practice, might
be expected. The evacuees were to be taken
to houses in the country where accommodation
for them had been arranged for. No inspection
of them was made before they were sent off,
nor does the suitability of the evacuees for the
establishment they were sent to, seem to have been
considered. Thus far the scheme has only
been a moderate success. No raid of the
kind contemplated has yet occurred, though
it may still be expected, and most, of the
women children finding the country too dull
for words, have returned home. The condition
of the children, especially from Glasgow, was a
disgrace to our civilization - As I heard a
man remark in the Club. 'They were not even house
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