Barcelona

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24.9.40 [George Orwell]

September 24, 2010 in Barcelona, John Lewis, Political, War-time, aeroplanes, bombs, marble arch, mosquito, oxford circus, oxford street, shell by orwelldiaries

Oxford Street yesterday, from Oxford Circus up to the Marble Arch, completely empty of traffic, and only a few pedestrians, with the late afternoon sun shining straight down the empty roadway and glittering on innumerable fragments of broken glass. Outside John Lewis’s, a pile of plaster dress models, very pink and realistic, looking so like a pile of corpses that one could have mistaken them for that at a little distance. Just the same sight in Barcelona, only there it was plaster saints from desecrated churches.

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1.9.40 [George Orwell]

September 1, 2010 in Barcelona, Home Guard, Paris, Political, Richard Rees, War-time, army, forage cap, shops, soldiers by orwelldiaries

Recently bought a forage cap. . . . . It seems that forage caps over size 7 are a great rarity.  Evidently they expect all soldiers to have small heads.  This tallies with the remark made by some higher-up to R.R. in Paris when he tried to join the army – “Good God, you don’t suppose we want intelligent men in the front line, do you?” All the Home Guard uniforms are made with 20-inch necks. . . . . Shops everywhere are beginning to cash in on the Home Guard, khaki shirts, etc., being displayed at fantastic prices with notices “suitable for the Home Guard.” Just as in Barcelona in the early days when it was fashionable to be in the militia.

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