{"id":1546,"date":"2022-03-30T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drtomstours.com\/?p=1546"},"modified":"2022-12-15T15:39:08","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T15:39:08","slug":"30-march-1941-sunday-belfast-1941-blitz-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drtomstours.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/30\/30-march-1941-sunday-belfast-1941-blitz-diary\/","title":{"rendered":"30 March 1941 (Sunday) \u2013 Belfast 1941 Blitz Diary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Life in Belfast continued for many as it had done for much of the interwar period. People went about their daily business without much regard for the war. Doreen Bates, a tax official, had moved to Belfast from London. Since 1934, she had been having an affair with an older married man, E (in her diary) with whom she worked. In 1940, she was was posted to Belfast and kept up a correspondence with E during her time in Northern Ireland. She felt that Belfast was \u2018a hideous place\u2019 and longed to go back to London.<a href=\"#_ftn1\" id=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div id=\"section-g164dd1\" class=\"wp-block-gutentor-e6 section-g164dd1 gutentor-element gutentor-element-image\"><div class=\"gutentor-element-image-box\"><div class=\"gutentor-image-thumb\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"normal-image\" src=\"https:\/\/drtomstours.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Diary-of-wartime-romancew.jpg\"\/><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On 30 March she wrote in her diary \u2018Yesterday, I shopped in the afternoon after lunch in Belfast. Just as I was leaving the officer Wardrop (her manager) paid a social call. He takes the official view, when you get your HG [higher grade, promotion] you must have your own district\u2026I had a chit [form]\u2026asking for\u2026any\u2026preferences. I said my preference for London had been strengthened since I came to Belfast but I would prefer almost anywhere in the southern half of England to NI [Northern Ireland]. A lovely letter from E on Friday morning \u2013 lovely, so lovely that I cried a little on the bus as I read it\u2019<a href=\"#_ftn2\" id=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" id=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Cited in Stephen Douds, <em>The Belfast Blitz, The People\u2019s Story<\/em> (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2011), p.15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" id=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> Doreen Bates,<em> Diary of a Wartime Affair, The true story of a surprisingly modern romance <\/em>(London: Penguin Random House, 2017), &nbsp;p.259.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Life in Belfast continued for many as it had done for much of the interwar period. People went about their daily business without much regard for the war. Doreen Bates, a tax official, had moved to Belfast from London. Since 1934, she had been having an affair with an older married man, E (in her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-34"],"blocksy_meta":[],"gutentor_comment":0,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drtomstours.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drtomstours.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drtomstours.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drtomstours.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drtomstours.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drtomstours.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drtomstours.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drtomstours.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drtomstours.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}