ONE of the many precautions enforced during the early years of the war involved windows being criss-crossed with strips of tape, or sticky paper, to reduce the risk of flying glass. It did not go unnoticed by this paper’s women’s editor, Jean Kelvin.

“By the way,” she observed on September 16, 1939, “this checkerboard arrangement of brown tape on shop windows makes quite a game of spotting purchases. It is practically impossible to see a whole article at once, but by inserting one’s head in a blank square, with nose flattened upon the pane, it can just be managed.

“The sight of several women thus at each window provides one of the lighter moments of war-time shopping. All is well so long as two people don’t dive simultaneously for the same blank square – a new version of noughts and crosses”.

Ten days earlier, she added, Glasgow’s streets had been deserted, “its warehouses and restaurants mournful halls of emptiness, with attendants standing idle.

“This week streets are busy, tearooms crowded, and shops thronged – especially the hosiery counters. The not altogether unfounded suspicion that prices will go up with a leap shortly has induced many women to buy their winter stocks early.

“There was another unusually busy department. Knitting has never completely gone out of favour, but judging by the patterns I saw being bought yesterday there must be a million miles of wool being knitted nightly into all sorts of garments, jumpers, scarves, blanket squares, and so forth.

“After all, one must do something when half the day is blacked out.”

As for the busy tearooms and restaurants – “Well,” Kelvin reasoned, “one must see one’s friends some time, and with evening visiting out of the question the midday rendezvous is the alternative.

“There is still something feverish about the atmosphere, as if one were not sure how much longer even this intercourse would be possible ...”

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