Letters to America

Sunday, January 31st, 1943

My darling Joan,

This is a dreadful day – blowing almost a gale and raining as hard. It’s such a long walk to Sunday School(1) that I didn’t send the children today. It was fortunate that I didn’t because Mr Gaze came across and asked John and Anne to go to tea with Patsy. It wasn’t long before Anne was ready and went off all alone and very gay. But John said he was shy and would not go – wasn’t he silly! He is playing by himself, quite content. They both went to Sheila Dobson’s party yesterday and had a lovely time, so I know he would be alright after he had been there a few minutes.

On Friday John and Anne had to take a little picture to school. One they had coloured, or out of an old book, and John brought his home in a neat paper frame he had made at school. Anne said hers was not very good, so she left it there. I don’t think she is so good at hand work, but her reading and figures seem very good indeed.

We haven’t yet received your spelling papers that you said Uncle Carl was sending. I do hope they aren’t lost. I’m afraid the snapshots have gone down. We do seem unlucky with pictures, don’t we? The only one we have of you since September 1941 is the coloured one you sent the other week.

I hope you are well darling, and happy. Did I tell you last week that John said a few days ago, quite suddenly at dinner, “I hope Joan is home when we are seven”. I think with a stroke of luck you may be, dear. I don’t want to seem ungrateful to Auntie Mary, but we are longing to see you again. Give Auntie Mary my love. I hope you are all quite well.

All of my love and lots of kisses
Mummy
xxxxxxxxxx

Darling Joan,

Well this is such a beastly sort of day that I don’t suppose we shall go out at all. All night the rain and the wind have been terrific and there isn’t a sign yet that it will get better today, so the twins will have to miss their Sunday School, because it is quite a long walk to Hatch End.

I came home from work yesterday afternoon feeling very poorly and went straight to bed, and have only just got up. I feel a good deal better now. I think I must caught a chill on Friday, which I spent all day out in a car visiting. It was a lovely day on Friday, sunny and warm, but towards the evening it grew colder. And on the way home we had to stop and change a tyre.

Yesterday the twins went to a party given by Sheila Dobson whose Daddy is in the Merchant Navy(2). They had a fine time, but John was the only boy amongst seven or eight girls. Still he seems to have enjoyed himself, somehow.

The other day Anne and John came home from school very excited because they had seen a banana. One little girl had had it sent home to her by her Daddy somehow, and she took it to school and all the children had a view of it, because none of them had seen a real banana for years.

We have just been told on the wireless that there have been very bad storms in the Atlantic Ocean, which probably accounts for the fact that we haven’t heard from you for so long. I had been hoping to receive your spelling papers this last week. Still, I know that a mail came in at the end of the week, because Mr. and Mrs. Kemp had some letters on Saturday morning, so perhaps we shall get ours on Monday. We cannot expect things to be otherwise, can we, with a war on and such bad storms. The letters that Mr. Kemp got were an air-mail and an ordinary mail both posted together and delivered together, so it looks as though they both came by the same means, doesn’t it?

Anne is busy this morning knitting her Mummy a kettle-holder, and John has made himself a sailing boat out of some old odds and ends. First it had a Union Jack at the top of the mast, but he has just changed it for the Stars and Stripes.

Very soon now we shall be seeing the hedgerows turn a pale green, as the leaf buds begin to open. That is a sight that I always look for. You see it first of all by looking along a hedge and it looks just a little green, and then you know that Spring really is on the way. A most exciting moment, I always think.

Well, cheerio(3) Joan. Have a good time and be a good girl.

From your loving
Daddy
xxxxx
xxxxx

  1. Sunday school is a school for religious teaching usually for children and young people and usually a part of a church or parish.
  2. King George V bestowed the title of the Merchant Navy on the British merchant shipping fleets following their service in World War I.
  3. People sometimes say 'cheerio' as a way of saying goodbye, especially in British English.