(36) Salisbury,
4-7-42.
Dear Mum,
There were letters from you, Hazel and Joan this week, so I am still doing well out of the mailbag. The latest was yours of May 17 (no. 30) which brings yours right up-to-date with still none missing (touchwood). I hope Hazel has been able to find that little somewhere near 813. If George is going to be kept in camp, that seems the best idea. It’s a good thing Uncle Andrew managed to get along to help you out. He is a jolly good sort when left to himself for a while.
As for the car, if you get a decent offer by all means sell it; of course it would be nice if it were there when I came home, but the money would be more use to you than the car idle in the shed. But don’t let it go to any old profiteer who thinks there is a chance of buying up a car or two cheap while there is no petrol available. Bet there will be plenty of that sort of thing going on.
I am glad you liked that photo of the big dinner in New York. It was good news to hear that it turned up, as I left the money and the address with the photographers just on the offchance that they really might send it. Evidently I was wronging them by suspecting that they wouldn’t. If you look closely you should be able to find Myrna Loy, Wendell Wilkie, Quentin Reynolds, and Air Vice-Marshal Billie Bishop, who was a great flyer in the last war. (P.S. – I’m in it, too, somewhere). There was also supposed to be a photo of our course at Saskatoon after our wings parade on our last day there, but probably no one bothered to send that on. It would, no doubt, be in the same mail as that missing letter 22, if it was ever posted, which is somewhat doubtful.
Hope you have taken that rest-cure down South, as I am sure that Hazel is right and it would do you good. The winter is not a very good time for travelling, I know, even in New Zealand, but a nice easy time with nothing to do but keep warm and go visiting or sightseeing would be good for you in any climate. So what about it? Little old 813 could be locked up for a little while without coming to harm.
By the way, I will not expect any parcels after those which are already on the high seas, as I know your money must be employed in lots of other ways these days, so don’t trouble about me.
Your mention of socks reminds me of a sad story about one home-knitted pair I took with me to Canada. I had lots of good wear out of them, but after they had visited the Saskatoon laundry a few times I began to notice that they were “fast fading away”, until eventually they shrunk so much that now they will only just cover my ankles – a little too short, even for me! So now they serve me as a pair of slippers, and as such, continue to do yeoman service. Funny that it should have happened to just the one pair.
There is very little news afoot for me to relate this week, as practically nothing has happened – just another week over, in fact. I haven’t even been in to Salisbury since we arrived on this station. The only break in routine was a night as Duty Pilot, which meant that I had to give up my comfortable bed for one not quite so comfortable in the watch office. However, I have yet to see the bed which can keep me awake, after all the different ones I have used since I joined the Air Force. On Monday I start out on another new type of aircraft, the best I’ll have flown yet, so that is going to be interesting.
Current weather is not encouraged as a subject for letters home, but since this is in the past tense the censor shouldn’t mind if I say that summer hasn’t put in its appearance in England yet. I think they expect it on a Wednesday this year. We had our summer a couple of months ago in Bournemouth, when the papers all announced some kind of a record for hours of sunshine. Anyway, Hawke’s Bay still wins hands down. I’d like to see a real London pea-soup fog before we leave this country; thought I was going to get it while I was on leave one day, because at 10 a.m. it was still like a dark evening. Great disappointment, though; it cleared up and I didn’t get “lost in the mist”.
Mum, I have been tickled to see that for quite a long time now you have been putting my number as “413380 N.Z.” instead of “N.Z. 413380”. It doesn’t in the least matter, but I have been amused wondering when you decided to change. Didn’t you like it the other way? No? Well, you have it your way, then, because the Post Office is quite happy about it and sends me all my mail just the same.
Well, Mum, it’s getting on towards bed-time and the supply of odds and ends is running low, so this is the end of this week’s effort. Till next time,
love from
Arnold G.