Monday, 3 January.

I went to Mabel in hospital yesterday afternoon. She has had both operations (rupture and veins) and is going on well. Sybil and Helen were there too and I went to tea with them. Helen's little boy, Gordon, was staying at the house. He is 9 years old and had made the mince pies we ate. They were really nice pies and it was when I was complimenting Sybil that she said Gordon had made them. He carefully weighed all the stuff out first. His mother says he makes a very good Yorkshire pudding! It is the first time I have had pies made by a small boy. He has got the sweetest face I have ever seen on a boy – too sweet for a boy – but he is a very nice boy for all that. Jacqueline and he were playmates for years but I think they are growing out of each other. She’d be more of a boy than he. Helen lives close to John and Lily, and says Jacqueline is growing a lot quieter and Janet is a regular Aynsley.

Wednesday, 5 January.

I heard two terrific thumps at 7.45 this morning. I expected to hear the syrens go, but it was two Fortresses crashed near Bedford.

Monday, 10 January.

I have kept this diary a year now so you will have a fairly good idea of how we are living (in Bedford) in wartime. This weekend I have been turned out of my little office that I shared with Mr Townsend. Since I have been on part-time I have not done his work and now they have given him a typist all to himself so naturally she should be in the room, and I am out in the Design Department among a dozen others. Everybody thinks this is the best and that I must have been bored to tears in the little room, but I preferred the seclusion.

The new typist is a married woman bombed out from Kent. She has a son 16½ who has just been apprenticed in our firm. She is looking for a house and has just come from Bourne End, Bletsoe!! There are not more than 6 houses in that hamlet and I am wondering whether she has anything to do with the people who bought Uncle Albert's house.