Thursday
Aberdeen
Dearest,
I warned you this would be brief and I’m trying to get a start on it in intervals at school. Many thanks for your long letter, which I will try to answer during the weekend, although Sunday is “dead” so far as writing is concerned through these damned invasion exercises. I had a parcel and letter together with a cigarette machine from Hughie today. My letter must have arrived just after he despatched his, but I’ll write again as soon as I can. I wrote to Harold last night after I had written your letter. I felt very guilty when I saw that his letter to me was postmarked April 2nd. It seems impossible to keep abreast of correspondence here.
School is not the best place to write letters. For instance, one of the lads looking over my shoulder has just been playing hell because there is no greeting on the top of this letter. “You’re balmy,” he said and I had not the heart to tell him I always leave the greeting from my letters until they are finished because of the ever-present danger of people over-looking me. I don’t suppose it matters a great deal, but I’m funny that way. This, incidentally, explains why one of my letters arrived baldly beginning with the first line of the letter. By the way, the lad who is so intrigued in this letter was shocked that I had not begun with “Dear Wife” or, as he pronounces it, “Dear Warf”! He is also a bit envious that I should be able to write two pages in such a short time. “Ista going to write mower?” he said incredulously when I was halfway down the second page. However, he thinks it a good idea to write in school and as he has just come back from a weekend “passionate” leave at Oldham, and has received two letters from his girl since he returned, he’s now in the throes of composition, with sundry spelling queries to the whole table. I’m telling you all this because it is so typical of the business of letter writing in the services. If you are not very careful half a dozen fellows will write your letters for you.
I had not intended to wander away like this, but there you are! I’m glad the kippers were so acceptable and that they solved Dave’s teatime problem. Let me know when you think I ought to send another box of kippers, which will have twice the amount of fish in it. How are you going to manage to split it up? Anyway, I’ll leave that for the moment and perhaps you will deal with it in one of your early letters. Grant tells me, by the way, that the fish he sends will probably be bigger than the ones you have had.
School has gone better this week for I feel I’m making slow progress, possibly due to the fact that I have not been at sick bay except for one morning. Now that I have finished there I’ll probably do better.
Sorry about this, but if you’d like to send the money for the kippers, they cost 3/3 including freight. I shouldn’t ask you normally, but I’m short this week with having to pay for my tobacco this week.
This is about all the news (?) for now.
Bye, sweet. I want to get this in the post to be certain you receive it by Saturday.
May 281942