CMF

Dearest…I send these still to Great Alne because I don’t know how long you will be at Kettering. Today came your sage comforting and shrewd letter about the problem “What to do with Mother”.    I am very thankful indeed that two so sage heads as Auntie’s and yours are concerned actively over the problem, and I do have full confidence in your judgement and tactful handling of it all.  I am pleased about the Month With Auntie, and think the house dividing a splendid idea.   The Home remains and Mother will have it still and won’t feel stranded and homeless.    She will have no financial worries, for a good price should be obtainable these days, and she will be free to go about the place.    The big snag will be the formidable prospect of the changing over, the carpentering and moving, the letting and reorganising.    That would be where I could help so very much.    It wants an agent really. Plans making, workmen laying on and then being done sharp and quick.   Certainly I back Auntie and you up and I am indeed glad you and she are so compatible.

A good day, it rained in the night and the temperature was more bearable, and we played cricket.   Very jolly, though we lost.   My bowling is getting more regular than ever and now Derek (very fast) and I (not at all fast but cunning) open together and I got three nice juicy wickets and then got out LBW for no runs, commonly called a duck.    But it was very jolly.   Yes I still field Point. After a shower and a nice dinner Barry and I went to the Piccini and heard an operatic orchestral and vocal concert, the full orchestra playing overtures and intermezzi, including Le Maschere, and Anna Farone, Mini Cavallo and a tenor singing arie.   Very pleasant and light and charming.    Tomorrow I go to the Famiglia Saviozzi to learn Italian from Giorgio and to talk and listen to his mother and father on Opera behind stage gossip.    And maybe for La Cena as well.

All is quiet, we still await orders.    The men are very docile now and look at me with large sorry eyes and do want to be forgiven please.   They are terrified of losing their own officers as they know is to be the case. I am game to take them back to work them, they’d be quite all right, but Higher Ups who don’t altogether understand them are a bit jumpy about them.     They   think they are wild dervishes and they’re not, though they got in a pretty wild state after not eating for two days and being worked up by each other.   Now they are very tame.

A better letter from Christopher, quite lucid and eloquent.   And one from Mother saying how very happy she is with you and our son who seems to go about pointing out my photograph to her gratification.

No news, all is quiet and bless us all.   You are being, as usual, the perfect comrade in this business of my good mother.   Bless you.

 Ever your own…
David  X