Walking in the Woods - Monday 5th June 1944

As usual

Monday June 5^th

Chotie Darling,

                                    I’m afraid I can’t acknowledge receipt of any of your letters for the simple reason that I haven’t had any.  I can, however, still write to you – what little news there is to write.

            We’re still having quite a good time here*, all things considered, though there’s very little to do and time is apt to hang rather heavily at times.  Unfortunately the library here is practically non-existent, some fifty volumes only and these are almost always out.

            I seem to spend most of my spare time walking in the woods.  And what delightful woods they are!  Not the finicky little trees one meets too often, but massive oaks, quite the largest I’ve ever seen, their great boles casting grotesque shadows even at noon.  I expect to meet Rosalind and Touchstone or even the melancholy Jacques walking up the path towards me….**

            And these woods are full of wildlife.  Yesterday I saw pheasant, partridge, rabbits, squirrels and in the evening a baby fox-cub.

            I found an excellent swimming pool (open-air) some few miles from here, so I usually take the boys there whenever practicable.

            I have read a couple of books lately – Alfred Neumann’s ‘Life of Christina of Sweden’***, and Naomi Jacob’s ‘Me-again’.  The latter I heartily recommend.  I’d read the original ‘Me – a story of other people’ but this later autobiography is even better.  I’ll try to get you a copy and send it to you as soon as possible. ***

            I’m just waiting for an audit board to start – a miserable job this weather as it means sitting in a tent for 48 hrs doing nothing but check invoices, bills etc.

            I was going to see ‘Fanny by Gaslight’ but after reading James Agate’s criticism***** of it I decided to give it a miss.

            Must close here for this audit racket.

                                    All my love, Darling

                                                            Dicker

 

*Dick had moved to the Aldershot area at the end of May.

**characters from Shakespeare’s play ‘As you like it’, which is set in a romanticised version of Shakespeare’s local Forest of Arden in Warwickshire.

***Alfred Neumann was a German writer who became a US citizen after his books were banned by the Third Reich.

****Naomi Jacobs was an English author, actress and broadcaster. Her first memoir was called ‘Me: a chronicle about other people’.  Other volumes including 'Me - again' continued her autobiography.

*****The drama critic for the Sunday times.

© Chotie Darling