A former colleague of mine, who lives and labours nowadays in London, has sent some of his impressions of the early stages of the war as it affected that teeming metropolis. I quote a few detached sentences:
". . . I was just getting up when the air raid sirens went off. I admit I didn't quite know what to do, beyond turning the gas off and making for the shelter across the street, complete with gas-mask. There I stayed for about half an hour, feeling increasingly silly as by that time I was beginning to realise the chances that it was either a false alarm, or that the raid was actually going on at Southampton or Edinburgh . . .
"I thought it out and came to the conclusion that one must be perfectly safe so long as one doesn't hear any anti-aircraft guns. So I acted on that theory during the two other alarms, and just stayed in bed."
". . . I wish they could think of another way of giving warning than the sirens, which wail in the most gruesome way."
". . . All the streets of London are the same, and yet so different - it's rather as if one were to see a clergyman in plus-fours . . . . Last night I walked home from the office in the moonlight. It was almost uncanny, like walking through Pompeii."
Talking of the white paint everywhere, he says, "I hear they are even thinking of painting the sterns of the wild ponies in the New Forest."
". . . Regent Street smells like Brighton beach because of all the sand-bags, and all the plate-glass windows have strips of paper glued across them to stop the glass splintering after an explosion.
"Some people glue the paper on anyhow, but others are most artistic. The best I've seen had arranged the paper so that it represented the balloons floating over London. Very appropriate, as the balloons are one of the great features of the place. There seem to be thousands of them, and they float about like big silver fish."
The Irish Times, October 21st, 1939.