Wed Feb 4 8 oc. PM [1942]
# HEAVIEST SNOWFALL OF WINTER
# CARS SKID OFF TREACHEROUS ROADS
# SKEGNESS BOMBING WITNESSED
# MALAYA-SINGAPORE LINK SACRIFICED
# RUG-MAKING PROGRESS
Have finished the Greek Key pattern on my rug border. It is going to take a long time but will look nice I think when done. Jean is putting in an oblong of black and red in the middle so.
May's sketch of Greek Key Pattern
Don’t know how it will be filled in. Am filling G.K in with green. Our brown and grey gull nearly lives in the garden now. Jean went down on her knees when she went to feed them yesterday and Father skated wildly on the path but kept up, tho’ he went down another day. Rene says she went down in Sunningdale Drive and this morning Mr Hallg[arth] apologised for being late at the W.Bx but said the “points were wrong at Hall’s Corner and he fouled them” he had gone on his back and spilt his hot tea out of his can down his coat. Am afraid there will be some broken limbs. Jean’s birthday tomorrow.
Eva went to Peterboro’ on Monday. Wonder how she is getting on. Think she was lodging with friends at first. Expect H[arriet] will be wondering about her, am afraid she won’t rest very well as Frank [Harness] is ill with flu’ in Nottm. Jean is putting Snip. out, she slipped in when Father went. We are going to get a little snack and go to bed. Kettle boiling for bottles. Father generally fills ours afresh when he comes in at 2. Am taking aluminium one too tonight. Oh, dear! I keep blowing my nose tonight but haven’t got the old cold in my head.
‘OP’ was the abbreviation for Observer Post, manned by the ROC, situated to the west of Harness’s Wigg Lane Farm (see Village Map).
Miss Blanchard was the name of the proprietress of the Élite Café on Lumley Road and the Violet Café under the pier, both in Skegness. The bombing in the town on February 2nd 1942, when ‘two service girls were saved from almost certain death or injury by an Army NCO’, was described in ‘Skegness at War’, Marjorie C Wilkinson, Cupit Press, Horncastle 2007, p 12.
Allied forces had retreated from Malaya to Singapore via the connecting Johor-Singapore Causeway which they blew up on January 31st 1942, in an attempt to delay the Japanese invasion of Singapore (see 11 Jan. 1942).
Traditional tales had the wise men of Gotham, a village in Nottinghamshire, deliberately behaving foolishly. Explanations included attempting to convince representatives of King John that the villagers all suffered from insanity (believed to be contagious), in order to dissuade the king from using a road or building a hunting lodge nearby, which would have resulted in taxes and restrictions.
‘Belton’s hill’ was the slope, down over the outflow, from ‘The Point’ to the ‘New Road’. Cyril Belton’s garage was nearby.
Percy Ranson, husband of Will’s niece Ciss, was the coalman.
“Points were wrong” was a ‘figure of speech’ which alluded to railway points.
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Peter Hayes:
February 5th, 2012 at 10.30 AM
Well here we are on 5th February 2012 in Burgh le Marsh some 8 miles from Chapel St Leonards and I have spent over an hour clearing my drive-way of snow. We may be 70 years on from the diary but a heavy snowfall can still cause problems which can prevent modern cars from travelling into town, goodness only knows how it must have been in my grandfather’s time.
TomA:
February 5th, 2012 at 10.49 AM
Our grandfather, Will, certainly was a real hero, setting off in all weathers including taking ‘local preachers’ to their Sunday destinations on the Methodist Circuit.