Saturday
Aberdeen
Darling,
As you will see from the date I’m making a start on this on Saturday and will get it into the post tomorrow. By the way, will you making a habit of dating your letters so that if I get behind in answering them I can sort them into their proper order? I’ve been re-reading some of your recent letters – lovely reading, darling, despite the disappointment of leave – and it has passed a happy, very happy hour. Now I’m going to try to be prosaic in this letter and answer some of the points which cropped up in those of your letters I have just been reading. But before I do that, WHEN DOES THE PHONE GO? My God, if I’ve asked that once I’ve asked it 10,000 times. Well, perhaps not that often, but quite a few times, anyway. Will you, could you would you PLEASE let me know?
You ask about the three leave vouchers before October. One will be used in July and another about the beginning of October, but don’t forget that leave in wartime is very chancy, as we have already discussed. They don’t pretend to guarantee anything. A pal of Harry Forman’s joined the Navy, went to Skegness, was sent from there to a base for training as a stoker and found himself on a ship without even a weekend leave. He went to Africa and the Mediterranean and arrived home more than 18 months later. What do you think of that?
From this point on this letter is likely to be very jumpy. About the bike, can’t you arrange for it to break down if you think it’s doing Michael harm? Is there any chance of Vic getting a couple of knock-off tins or pots of jam FOR ME? The jam ration seems a funny business and soon goes and since I have been drinking so little I’m developing a sweet tooth! By the way, I don’t expect you to sacrifice any of yours. If you do that I really will be annoyed. I don’t want to develop the frame of mind one gets with Mother – you know what I mean, where one gets afraid to mention a thing for fear it arrives by return of post! Do be sensible about this, love.
I’m glad Wendy is making friends of her own and that you were able to get over the situation without any lasting impression on Michael. He will soon be going places without Wendy and they may both be better for developing their own individual interests. Watch the Savage boys and at the slightest sign of trouble, see them off. That is part of our house, not a public thoroughfare. Townsend is a pest not fixing that gate. One of the very last thing I did was to mention it to the Townsend who used to collect the rent. I met him a day or two before I came away in the Blundellsands and I think I told you about it at the time. I was interested in the point you made about the children being afraid you might go away too. It is quite an understandable fear. Sometimes I wonder if they do miss me. I don’t think they feel any real sense of loss while you are there. Most probably know I’m no longer in the house, but I doubt if they really miss me. Just now they are so busy absorbing new impressions and new ideas, that their own joys and fears probably fill the whole of their horizon.
No, Percy is not married. Too damn self-centred and realises it, I think. Hates babies, too. I remember someone like that!
Some day soon I’ll try to give you a timetable of the day here. It’s quite different from Skegness. Perhaps I can do it now. This, of course, refers at the moment to the civilian college. We get up about 8 and get to a place called Holborn Junction for 9.15 when we fall in and march to the college about three or four minutes away. Why we can’t walk there and back I don’t know. Holborn, by the way, is just over five minutes walk from our billet. At 11.15 we have a stand-easy and can buy a cup of tea and a cake. At 12.15 we march back to Holborn, dismiss and go for lunch, returning there at 1.45. In the afternoon we have a stand-easy at 3.45, more tea, and finish at 5pm. Again we march to Holborn and dismiss. We are then finished for the day but by the time we reach the digs, clean ourselves up and and have tea, it’s getting on for 7 o’clock. Then we have to go to the Club if we hope to get our letters written peacefully. As the last collection is at 8.30 there is very little time, as you will see. Then back home, wash, shave and clean our boots ready for morning and it’s 11 o’clock by the time we are in bed. That is how the day goes by. In addition to that, we have to report at Holborn at 9 o’clock on Friday mornings, march to the baths – the biggest and newest indoor baths in Great Britain – and have a hot shower and swim (if we wish) and be dressed and in the street by 9.45. Not much time to dawdle there, is there?
When we go to Torry, however, we will have to be at school at 8.15 and the journey takes about 25 minutes. The rest of the timetable will be the same except that we will have to be at the baths at 7am. Not a nice thought, although we are allowed until 9.30 to get home for breakfast and get to school. Some of the fellows in our billet make a habit of reaching the baths at 6.30 and leaving earlier so as to have a good break after breakfast. It also means breakfast – which in Scotland consists of salted porridge and rolls – is hot when you get it. Well that gives you an idea of our day. We can come in when we like and, as far as I know, there is no check on whether or not we sleep at the billets. There would be a row, of course, if we changed billets without permission.
As to Aberdeen itself, I’m beginning to get acclimatised. For some time I couldn’t make up my mind about it. There are many lovely buildings here, all, of course, in grey local stone which has given the place the the name of the Granite City. Wherever you look you see spires, domes, turrets and torres in lovely grey stone. The main shopping street, Union Street, possesses some fine shops, just as Princes Street, Edinburgh, has. We saw Princes Street in the short time we waited there on the way up to Aberdeen. All the houses in Scotland have one thing in common – they are built solidly of great granite blocks and they are built on much more generous proportions than in England. The modern house, as we know it, is rare but is now seen occasionally on the outskirts of the big cities which is a damn shame. Most of the streets, even the smaller ones, seem wider than ours, perhaps they have to be because the houses are generally of three floors. There is a good deal of space at the back, too, although in the case of our house the back garden has been trampled to death and I must admit it looks rather frowsy. I rather think that will be the same with most of these houses which are generally inhabited by several families with the result that nobody seems to own the garden. The civvy wireless college we are attending is out in what you might call the professional quarter of the city and although trams run along the road there is no resemblance to, say, Stanley Road or Smithdown Road. For one thing there are no shops there. Instead there are these tall light grey houses, the homes chiefly of doctors, dentists, solicitors etc with a sprinkling of nursing homes. The trams are set in the ordinary roadway but on one side of the road there are trees and gardens and, beyond them, a carriageway running in front of the houses, which are thus quite a long way from the traffic. The houses on the other side are also set well back from the road behind walls which give a sense of privacy and yet don’t convey the “you keep out” atmosphere.
Altogether rather different from the average city.
Sunday
We have been rather devils this week. There are five of us go about together on occasions – Percy, Gibbie, Gibbie’s pal Edgar Taylor who is a real heavy Yorkshire lad, and a very nice fellow named Ralph Oliver. On Friday, Ralph, who works in one of the engineering depots of the Post Office, heard that he has been promoted to a post which will give him another £300 a year when he gets back after the war. He’s only 27 so it seems he is going to make his mark in the Post Office. He was telling me he had expected to hear something before he was called up and had he done so he would have drawn this extra money all the time he was in the Navy! As it is I fancy he lifts a useful packet every month. On Friday he insisted that we had a pint to celebrate so we went and had several pints and everyone got the holiday spirit. We decided that we would make this a holiday weekend and last night went out on a little pub-crawl. Nothing ambitious, but just a steady drift from place to place, sinking the odd pint here and there. At 9.30 we wandered into a big and rather tough dance hall, not unlike the Grafton. We got in without paying, to the great annoyance of the man on the door, and once inside found several of the lads from our billet slightly the worse for wear and almost all the younger element of our class, many of whom were just plain dead drunk, especially the two smallest who are amusing youngsters from Oldham. I’ll tell you about them some time. They’re reet Lancaster, sithee! Well, all this crowd let out a great yell when we walked in and when the old man of the mountains – that’s me! – got up to dance they lifted the roof off. You would have laughed if only you could have seen them. Everybody else in the place wondered who I was. The younger lads are a good set of kids who love to greet me by calling me Pop and Uncle and even Grandad. But it is all done without malice. One of these Oldham kids has an india rubber mouth and makes the funniest impersonation of my gummy state. What makes it all the funnier is the fact that people don’t realise I have had my teeth out unless I tell them, so you can tell how little affect it has had on my appearance. That’s probably the reason I can stand all this leg pulling so well. I’m not in the least self-conscious about it, if that is any comfort to you.
All that is by the way. I set out to tell you of the holiday plans. You can see we had some quite good fun last night. Today – I’m writing this during the morning so as to get it into the post – we are going to walk along the banks of the River Don, if the weather holds out. It’s looking very dull just now. Tomorrow we hope to go in the opposite direction and walk along the other river, the River Dee. We have made up our minds to see all we can of the country while we are here. There is no point in sitting down moping, is there? One place I do want to visit before I leave is Balmoral, which is some distance from here but I believe it is set in some lovely country. With the longer days coming we should be able to get about quite a bit at the weekends. Compulsory church parade on a Sunday is a snag and although some of us could probably dodge it, we would have to leave Percy in the lurch. Being class leader, or platoon commander as they call them here, he can’t very well get away without being missed. Still, we will be free on Saturdays and Sundays from midday which is more than we were at Skegness.
Well, precious, that gives you a good idea of how I’m behaving, or misbehaving myself, while I’m away from you. We may have to pull our horns in later on, but just now we feel we ought to get around a bit while we can. There certainly seems to be no point in just sitting down in a bedroom for hours on end as some of the lads here do. I’ve always wanted to see something of Scotland and I’m going to make the most of my chance. I’ll keep an eye open for likely places for seduction, but I cannot guarantee a bank of heather because so far we have not seen any at all, not even coming up on the train.
It’s now well after midday and I’m still in my pyjamas, with bellbottoms and jersey on top. I have had a real lazy morning and I still have to wash and shave before dinner so I must go. I’m still loving you lots and lots but trying not to think TOO much about you until nearer the time when I can look forward to wrapping my arms around you again. What a day that will be! All my love, sweet. Hope the headache has quite gone now. Bye darling.
Ever your own,
Arthur X
P.S. Would you like to buy me a little present? I have to wear my identity disc round my neck instead of on my belt as I always have done. At the moment I have it on a piece of string, but would like a thin chain. Have you got one? If not would you like to buy one for me? I should like it to come from you and not anyone else. Don’t pay a fancy price for it. One from Woollies will do quite well if they have any. Now I MUST go and sing ‘The Red Flag’ and ‘Danny Boy’ in the bathroom!