1224/5  Shipworking Sections R.E.  C.M.F.
No 207

Dearest….
Well, isn’t that grand, two letters this fine  sunny day and me singing about the place that glad.   One was written on Christmas Eve  and finished on Christmas Evening,  and  the other on Boxing Day and finished when you had got home, my son Dickie rushing around the house  seeing Victoria and the hens  and being glad to be  in his home. It  is good of him to like it and not to want something grander or larger or better. And Father Christmas has been very good, he’s got to be curbed from spoiling him, too.  An Aylesbury duck who’s head goes like duck’s heads do go, and a cross between a swan and a stork and clothes. I don’t know. That you liked the bag I  am very glad, I thought you would because D can interpret  taste so well and I gave her  a rather  sweeping commission  to perform. The silly stones you liked too, I knew you would. They are ideal for a present, being quite useless. Bless us all.     The marzipan house on the cake sounds bonny.

                        Your present  came,  bless you,  Blunden’s book in fine  condition and unscrumped by  the  post and in it  some Dickie Pictures  and an envelope  full of ghosty  ones  the  day before  so I have  a battery all  at twelve  months   or thereabouts.   He   looks a likeable personable young man.

In the  post  is Chapter  two of Hector  and Chapter three  is written and  is  being  sorted and ballooned  out   and Chapter  4  is being done.     I am going ahead now,   rightly or wrongly. We can decide that afterwards. It seems rather ordinary to me but may not be so to others.  I   am avoiding the dramatic of which there is so little. My idea is to have half a dozen chapters on training, through to commissioning and then three or four about England. Some on the trip and Sicily and North Africa and Salerno.  And then the rest on the rest. I am avoiding a pattern but shall keep the shape   in mind.  It must  be  plastic  because  I don’t  know  the   last  part myself, may be  all Burmese for  all I know though I doubt  it.

Going to the opera this evening with the Colonel, just us two which is odd.       The Warsaw Concerto is like a celluloid collar, seems all right, but it doesn’t wear well and its cheapness is poor economy.  The drawback with the Civil Service is that your immediate superiors are always incompetent. These two sayings are new and useless but remind me to use them at a dinner party some time. Thank you. Your He-man and Good Fellow is like a cat’s life each day. In the morning he is weak and it takes a  long time  for his eyes to open but  at night he  is  lively, very smart  and has  the ardour of a Tom.

Stop that.  I will.  I have. Very good thing to have given the coral to Aunt Jess,   I endorse and echo what you said I said. I’ll write and thank her for having you. Maurice   likes R.J.S.D. then, and Uncle Fred is benign and Jess  is  tricked  and duped, eh?  Let him try to trick  and dupe –  jupe – me.  Fancy that Emily! If only we’d kept a register, she’d be worth an article in the Countryman or the Vet’s Lancet. And Dickie meeeeowed at her.  Nice.  I love and chuckle at our innocent ideal of our child having one toy, two stones in an old tin!    Ducks and swans,  barrows  and engines, whirligigs and Punch and Judy Shows.  Thanks for elucidating the bracelet operation, what  a blessing one panel off didn’t make it too small. That was bought in Castellamare in the early days before   prices went up and when British soldiers were rare and cost about twenty one shillings. The tea set and candlesticks and all from Vitri cost a pound the lot. Prices are soaring now and have been since then.

I’ve acquired the Beggar’s Brotherhood, an Allen and Unwin Book on Elizabethan beggars, and Bryant’s The Years of Endurance. Readable. I’ve got War and Peace complete too.  Been lucky lately.

Oh, guess what.  A card from Anne, now Enid Rice! Married a bloke in the army now in India,   I presume the army.  Only had a fortnight together,    Her address is 3 Regents Park Terrace, N.W.I.    Would you believe it.   Bless her.

So Mother Anne Mother Anne- sounds like  a nursery rhyme- likes the brooch.     Good.  She   should have   something she likes.  Got a little Valor stove for  my  room and having curtains  made  and a  book  case  and shall be  snug and shall write. The Mess is noisy and anyhow they’re nice chaps but not like Peter and Allan.    Got a small armchair and really I’m having a disgustingly easy passage this war so far. News  from Leghorn  is very   good and  they are  making  a name  for  themselves  due to the good quality  of   the men   and Peter’s  efforts. So far away, oh dear. Speed, Postie, speed the polyphotos. The snaps you have sent are good, and he does seem straight in the back and good in the bearing and pleasant withal.  Oh dear. But thank Heavens I have you to report so sensitively and revealingly on his living and being.  Your little comments are like shafts of light in the dimness   of my wondering.  Bless your letters, and bless you. Take it  easy now  and relax,   after  the  cards  and  all  that,  relax on everything except my letters….I do love you…ever your….  David