Oct 091942
 

Friday
Glasgow
Dearest,
Another Saturday letter! Do you realise that there will only be two more after this from Glasgow? And a few days after that I should be home again. What an inspiring thought. Oh, darling, some of the lads have been building castles against the day when we are demobbed. Not all of us have rosy pictures of what may happen then but, with all the risks, we can think of nothing finer than the day when we come home. I have just been saying to Charlie that we may be lucky enough to get home in the summer or even the autumn and, if we are, the first thing I’m going to do is take the family for a decent holiday before we spend whatever gratuity I have on something stupid. What a vision that conjures up. All of us on holiday spending whole days together out in the open air and then, at night, the children safely abed, you and I going to a show and supper, with bed afterwards and it would not matter then if you had vapours or not for I would be able to hold you close and know that hundreds, aye thousands, of days and nights stretched away ahead of us. It is an enchanting vision of the future and one which makes this stupid insane existence bearable. Let us hope we have not to wait too many years before it comes true.
I have, as usual, been thinking a good deal of you tonight for I have been to the pictures with Charlie to see ‘Reap The Wild Wind’. Have you seen it? There are some fine sea scenes in it, perhaps some of the most effective being sunset shots and others of an early steamer/sailing ship drifting through fog. It’s a film I should think you would like. I had heard a good deal of it and was glad to have seen it for it was not too sobby and there were some good scraps in it. Here and there it was spoiled by obviously faked photography, notably underwater scenes in which two divers fight a giant squid. Still, I enjoyed the change which brought you a lot nearer to me. The cinema is one of the places where I often meet you, which is rather surprising when you think how seldom we have been there together in all the years of our courtship(!) and our married life. But for all that you were there tonight, holding my hand and agreeing with my occasional comments on the photography or the acting. And talking of photography, we must get Dave to take some more of us when I’m home. I asked him about a studio of you and he passed it off for the time being but I’m hoping he will do one before I finish my leave. Outdoor pictures will probably be pretty hopeless by then if the weather is anything like what it is up here even now. It has been absolutely freezing here all day. A real winter’s day, and nights when we would doubly appreciate a wife! You know how nice it was at home on Saturday and Sunday. Well, it rained solidly here throughout the weekend.
Must leave you now. See you later, love, when I have had your letter.
There has been a bit of a scare here in the last few days because two fellows in a room in a separate part of the building have been taken to hospital with diphtheria and the racket at the moment is that everyone in the place, from the Commander down, has to gargle every morning. There’s nothing to worry about, love, for there’s no sign of it spreading.

Friday dinner time
Just back from dinner. And what a dinner. I don’t know of any other chef who would go to the trouble this fellow does. Most of them ruin good food in the cooking. There’s no doubt we feed better than most civvies. Soup, steak and kidney, and baked apple pudding swimming in custard, with second helpings of the latter if necessary. Yesterday we had rhubarb and custard and some of the fellows had four helpings with the result that all yesterday evening, and this morning, and even during the night, there was a big queue at the lavatories, which are not sufficient for normal needs! We do have fun and games.
I’m so glad you feel better now. Please, sweetheart, don’t for a moment think that I think you were deliberately responsible for my fit of the blues. You weren’t, angel, for it was a lovely weekend. But you know as well as I do that you were feeling down in the dumps when I left and you know, too, that whenever you are feeling like that it makes me feel, in a way, responsible because I have come home on an unexpected weekend. Darling, I’m sure I haven’t expressed this very well but it has taken me just a quarter of an hour to write these two sentences because of a great crowd of fellows arguing heatedly about a form we have had to fill in. It’s a routine form we get everywhere we go, but there is always the same row about it.
I’m annoyed because there’s so much more I wanted to say and I must go now. I do hope you have a nice weekend at Limedale and don’t forget to pay her for the tobacco. I’ll think of you this weekend when I’m at Rothesay. Unless the weather improves it is not going to be very pleasant. Bye for now, sweet. All my love.
Ever your own,
Arthur X