Saturday, July 10th, 1943

Darling Joan,

On Wednesday evening I went to hear Mr. Amor’s talk about his visit to Rochester. Mummy had been in the afternoon with some of the other mothers, and in the evening he re-read his talk to the fathers and the mothers that couldn’t get to his afternoon talk.

Mummy had a talk with him afterwards and he told her a few special things about you, including how he was taken to see your wardrobe, and how you gave him a message to bring home to us and which we duly got.

He told us many interesting things about your life out there under war conditions, and altogether it was a most enjoyable talk, and made everyone very pleased and happy, but gave us a few things to think about at the same time.

It is Saturday afternoon, nearly tea-time. It is raining. hard and has been all day. And it is none too warm, either. But I have been out onto my allotment⁽¹⁾, planting out some winter greenstuff. Despite the rain the ground is very hard and dry just below the surface, and I am hoping now that the rain will go on like this for a day or two, because we have had so little lately.

John and Anne are both busy writing you a letter, which I will enclose with this. They went to a circus held in a local Recreation Ground, as part of the “Stay-at-Home-Holiday” campaign, which is organised to save travel by giving a few holiday attractions at home. But it is a poor substitute for the sand and sea for the little children.

Last night Mummy and I went to see a film called “The Desperadoes” which you may have seen. We wished afterwards we had taken John to see it because he would have loved the stampede of wild horses and all the shooting.

Dora’s little baby brother, Roger, is a wonderful little chap, and she is very proud of him. We don’t see so much of Dora now because she helps her mother a lot now, and doesn’t get so much time to play with the twins as she used.

Now I must finish because I have promised the twins I would show them a film before tea. I have a film of a flooded river with cattle and sheep swimming down with the flood, and the peasants trying to rescue them, and John never tires of seeing it.

You will find that John’s letter is written better than Anne’s because she will not listen to us when we try to tell her how she should form her letters. She will never admit she is wrong, but I expect next time she will form her letters better without being told.

I hope you will be able to understand John’s drawings which are supposed to be some of the things he saw at the circus. I know they had some funny things there, but I don’t think they were as funny as he has drawn them.

Cheerio⁽²⁾, Joan darling, and lots and lots of love from
Daddy
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