September 3rd. Time has passed so quickly that it is hard to realise that beautiful autumn is already upon us. Yet as the days draw in, lights go on earlier, and our hut grows fuller and work more engrossing. Outside the laughing, gurgling wavelets, chasing each other round the rocks, are replaced by white-crested breakers that rage along the shore at high tide and cut us off from the town.
Boulogne is once more animated, as people transfer their attention during leisure hours from country pursuits to the joys of the shops, whose windows give forth an enticing glow.
Our hut being the most easily cleared and converted into a concert hall, it was decided to hold a performance there entirely for nursing sisters.
About four hundred of them turned up, and, in spite of the difficulties of getting sufficient cars to convey them backwards and forwards, it proved a great success.
The morning before we had spent in trying vainly to get the place into hospital-like order, so that even their critical eyes might have no fault to find. It is extraordinary how many obstacles stood in our way. For in France women scrubbers never go on their knees to work, their method of cleaning a floor being to flood it with water and chloride of lime, and having vaguely played about with mops on the end of a long broom, to leave it severely alone; and as, long before the place has had a chance to dry, it is being tramped on by men in muddy boots, the results are disastrous, to say the least of it.
Nor is it at all easy to get rid of the refuse of the place, which has either to be consigned to the incinerator, buried in trenches, or carted away; and although the mayor's cart sometimes condescends to call once a week, it usually takes a good deal of persuasion.
September 12th. A day off duty is best begun by a swim. To float on the warm, pellucid waves, rejoicing in the sun and breeze, is to be alive. The next item on the programme is to look up old friends. This is not altogether without disappointment, for they are all, like oneself, "war worn" and beginning to be pessimistic. Many are on the verge of a nervous breakdown, owing to the isolation of their position (it is quite a tragedy in itself to note the number of people who can't afford to have friends); others, and quite a number, have found solace in religion and have turned Catholic, being baptised in the Cathedral that has watched so many changes these last months.
From home come letters full of Zeppelin raids. Squadrons of these must have come, according to descriptions. Everyone claims to have had them "just over our street."
September 20th. We are glad to see the pest of flies and wasps abating at last. May that wonderfully efficient sanitary inspector—the bane of so many people's lives!—whose unflagging zeal has rendered this disease-ridden neighbourhood quite a passable health resort be honoured and sung as he deserves. The construction of baths and laundries are minute details compared with the difficulties of coping with drainage and flies.
Owing to the prevalence of the cesspool system here, the French authorities permit only of creolin as disinfector; and, in spite of effluvia, none of the ordinary deodorants is allowed. Then, quite recently and with no warning, to cope with the shortage of water, the contaminated water of the Odre River was let in to supplement the ordinary supply, and we were served with notices to the effect that all water used (1) for drinking, (2) for washing up cups, plates, cooking utensils, etc., (3) for cleaning teeth, must be either boiled or chlorinated, with many other regulations calculated to counteract the idiosyncrasies of contaminated water.