[Christmas eve – See footnote1.]
At work as usual. Mill stopped at 6 o’clock a.m. We finished in good time and Tom Fagin† brought his gramophone across and played it until nearly 6 o’clock. I went up town at night and posted some Christmas cards. Called at station for Ernie but he didn’t arrive. Went up town later and called at Wiseman’s both in going and coming. Joe’s face swollen very much and he can’t go out. Bought Gertie a music case. And read a lot of The Manxman2 and went to bed about 1 o’clock. Charlie out tonight. Ernie arrived at Boldon with Hilda and the baby.
ALL didn’t mention, and presumably hadn’t heard of, the first German bomb dropped on British soil on Christmas Eve, 1914. A single German aircraft (which appears to have got away unscathed), dropped a bomb which fell in a garden near Taswell Street in Dover, where there is now a blue plaque on the wall reading “Near this spot on Christmas Eve 1914 fell the first aerial bomb ever to be dropped on the United Kingdom.” ↩
ALL had started to read this book a few days earlier, on 22 December. See The Manxman and Arthur Linfoot’s Library. ↩