Letters to America

Sunday, April 4th, 1943

This letter is unfortunately incomplete.


My darling Joan,

I have my first Spring flowers indoors this week, and they look very lovely. A few daffodils, narcissus and primroses. There has been a restriction on sending any flowers by rail or post, but it has been lifted now and there are more in the shops within our price range. The flowering currant is looking pretty now, but apart from a few scillas in the front, that is all we have in the garden at the moment.

It has been glorious this weekend and we have spent a lot of time outdoors. I do hope you are having some real nice Spring weather now – you have had some bad blizzards and a hard winter compared with us.

John and Anne have had some fun too putting the tent up – and no soon was it up when down it came again. They had their tea in it this afternoon with little chairs and the card table, and afterwards Dora came along and played with them until bed-time. It is so light now that they find it very hard to go to sleep. They make me smile when I call to them to go to sleep and not talk. They always say “We don’t know how to!” The clocks have been put on another hour for double summertime and blackout(1) is not until just after 9 o’clock now. Dora’s Sunday School(2) teacher brought her some tadpoles and she has given a few to John and Anne, so now we have a chrysalis in a match-box and tadpoles in a glass jar. I wonder how long they will survive!

I put the rabbit we are having for Easter on the lawn under a wire cage today and it started scratching big holes – trying to burrow, I suppose. I will not put him out again!

Well darling, there’s no particular news this week. I ...

  1. Blackout regulations were imposed on 1 September 1939, before the declaration of war. These required that all windows and doors should be covered at night with suitable material such as heavy curtains, cardboard or paint, to prevent the escape of any glimmer of light that might aid enemy aircraft. External lights such as street lights were switched off, or dimmed.
  2. Sunday school is a school for religious teaching usually for children and young people and usually a part of a church or parish.