A nice sunny Sunday afternoon, first our little service at 9 and then a quite busy short session in the office until 11, then the Club and Coffee and Country Life, a walk home, lunch and now limbering up with a letter and then maybe an afternoon starting off ACT 2.  Tea here, the Club for dinner and the Mercury for the last performance of Musical Chairs and so to bed.  And yesterday there was a letter, of the 19th. leaving a gap between the 7 and that, wherein there must have been letters written, because you are so good at it and also because you refer to Honor being there and you must have had news of the impending visit in missing letters; so they are to come.  It was a great relief, getting the letter, and a nice letter it was, Honor was threading pearls, you writing, Mother Anne doddering about and Richard, I suppose was sleeping, no he was “clean” so you went out, therefore I take it as being pre-post time.  Oh dear;

                        Not only did the Brigadier, the Tn and our Chief drop hints that he’d find me a good promotion job if I stayed on, but a Colonel from GHQ was with my CO this morning and officially asked me to defer promising me a majority after 1 May if I did.  I had to seem to think it out but I said that I had two loyalties, and loyalty to you ranked highest now the war was over and I feared not.  They politely said I might be DOV  (deferred, operationally vital) anyhow, but I said I’d risk that and would appeal anyhow as I couldn’t agree that I was operationally vital, doing Regimental and not technical duties. My CO suggested I should ask you and leave it to you and I said that would be useless because you were too nice to try to influence me.  So I asked for a day to ponder and I’ll give them a gracious answer conveying a firm negative.  I don’t think there is much danger of being DOV’d or else they wouldn’t try to get me to defer voluntarily, it was all friendly and complimentary to me.  There is a big reorganisation going to take place here and they want me to see them through that.  I go to Suez with the CO,  just the two of us for the first steps in the reorganisation, on the third.  Henry is very sad.  The other Group is being disbanded and absorbed by us, and we are taking over more ports. Ian Knight will be CO the new group and the other Adjutant is losing his job as they want me to have it.  One colonel, one group one adjutant.

                        So we travel again.  We’ll set up headquarters there and call the officers and troops to us as we are ready for them.  It’ll be a very busy but a very interesting and constructive job.

                        Of course I am interested in what you wear !  The black dance frock with the lace sounds lovely, and danced off your feet indeed. The gente fortunate !  Poor me.  Defer, me, ME with you there.  Johnny Fawcett is here and has deferred for all time, and is trying to have his wife and Micheal out, which is stupid, its a dreadful place really, horrible people the Gyppos, slimy treacherous and murderous, and it is all artificial, the European colony is artifical and the pasha and effendi class are gangsters and the rest are brigands, who parade syphillitic sores to beg with and cut a throat in a dark lane for ten piastres.  I’d never have a woman out here.  Not one like you. The only good thing is the climate and you take the everlasting sun for granted.

                        Just snoozed for half an hour, then slain a mighty number of flies and back here I am.  I think I have had enough of travels and seeing places, after a while they tend to get all the same, one place much like another and none so good as your own countree, especially when there is someone waiting for you as nice as you are.  I have quite a good appeal against deferment, – two and a half years from my wife, child I’ve not seen, strain on my wife, one-man-business which is derelict in my absence, elderly mother, three  campaigns, Sicily, Salerno and Western Italy 1944 advance.  People  here have been here all the time, and have never seen or heard of war.  So I should, if deferred, appeal.  They do seem to want me here though,  mistaken niceness on their part !

                        I await the  other letters eagerly, and the Service Dress.
My love to you, like the Duke of Windsor I’ll give up a crown for you, only Parliament would have liked you for a Queen.