A shippy life once more, & in many ways, very nice too. This ship is particularly nice. Brand-new & the officers all with narrow chins & wide foreheads, handsome mothers in leather frames, violins & art & the 3rd paints & the 2nd writes verse & they are all “of a certain class”. Even the 1st who lacks the cultural qualities of the younger officers, dresses like a stage ships officer & talks Oxford. All very odd, for they’re hospitable to a degree & in between they lure me into cabins & we discuss Dostoyevsky & Gaugin & music. The strangest crew I’ve met.

                        Poor Peter heard yesterday that his twin Dennis, a gunner captain, was killed in Normandy. Peter was devoted to his brother & was always talking of him. Married & a baby aged twelve months. He was all Peter wanted to be. He is being sensible & working hard & we play much Backgammon. It’s the Thing past thinking of for his wife & people.

                        You were worried, poor Darling about us & the South of France. I knew all about it & we helped, but this, the safe end. As it happens I’d have liked it, definitely nearer you, who are home.

                        The special pictures from Rome hadn’t arrived when you wrote last.  Hope they have. Dickie’s are very sweet I think. The Virgin Mary & the pink dress delightedly me.
So Paris is ours. Good.

                        Dear Mother is so set on sitting & watching me arrive home ! I can’t tell her No. Just leave it. There’s time enough & when the time does come, like the Lord, I’ll come unexpectedly. You’ll have a chance to clear the decks preliminarily. I couldn’t bear us & our delighted shyness being on exhibition, even for my so pleased but so Victorianly sentimental Mother. I’d need a bloody bandage on the forehead & an arm in a sling ! No, we’ll visit her. I’ll fix it. Oh dear, to think of it is greedily dangerous. But it will happen.

                        Dora’s pathetic letter came ! One can do nothing. By cold standards it’s evil & despicable. But who can judge. Knowing Bill I suspect the ordinary standards apply for he is dammed by ordinariness.

                        A whisper has reached me that my “special job” is to be Group Education Officer. I don’t know ! It will be to organise a  Education programme when the Armistice is signed, to keep restless soldiers who are not demobbed, happy. A worthwhile job I shouldn’t wonder. But ’tis’s only summer. We’ll see. For the moment I’m most content & I’m spending nothing & shall be doing Things soon.

                        We have a black tame rabbit now, also 5 cats & one very little dog called Woodbine.

                        So Gwen has gone & Dorothy comes. Dickie will have a grand assortment of people to think of. A good thing. What is the Yarnold reaction to the portrait ? I’m always interested in people’s reactions.

                        I want a picture of you.

                        J.G.L. Should see the Lanave. Make him.

                        Very hot here, the hottest yet, but not as hot as Sicily was.

                        Your sonnet I often read. It’s a precious gift, & I still carry Wavells anthology about with me. Bless you, & my son.