While I have been writing this the post came, and brought X’s annual letter to me. We were amused to see a reference to the Armistice day discussion – but very polite. She said you ‘retired from the argument with grace but entirely undefeated’!!
Thank you for your ALC. They seem to take longer and longer in the post. It’s almost as long as the war when I was in Egypt and letters went round the Cape taking about six or seven weeks. Then they introduced an air mail, which went somewhere across the middle of Africa by flying boat – I expect from Lagos to Lake Victoria and up the Nile – and that took a fortnight, and then they introduced another thing called an air graph, I think, where one wrote on a special sheet which was photographed and reproduced about one quarter size at the other end – and that for some reason only took five days – apart from which one could occasionally send a cable which took 24 hours – we did it once a week. You can imagine what a mess one’s correspondence got in with so many alternatives – little snippets of news were compressed into the quick forms, and then turned up, in extenso, about two months later. It was all very confusing.
Where is Stamford Brook? I can’t remember but suppose it’s miles away in Essex, perhaps. Not that there’s anything wrong with a lot of Essex -apart from having to come to Liverpool Street – once you get away from Dagenham and the other industrial messes along the Thames. I seem to remember some really nice country that I used to drive round in the first few weeks of the war, looking at searchlights (looking for them to begin with, since some of our sergeants weren’t all that clever with a map – though you could always tell when you had got the right place, because there was a telephone connection waiting for you on the nearest telephone pole!)
Now it is nearly news time which means more unpleasant moves from Bosnia, all too reminiscent of the late 1930s it seems to us, and meanwhile I must lay the table.
Filed words 