Alec to his parents:

Dear Mum and Dad

Thanks once again for your weekly letter. Time now 11:45 a.m. and no sign of our joiner. He has still to fix the doors on the cupboard under the sink (two) and on the new cupboard in that line, and on the new one on the dresser.

Again I am able to give an all correct report on health at this end. No change in the neck but no trouble from it. I shall arrange not to be inside for Whitsun. Unless it starts to give trouble of course.

Yes our kitchen arrangements are going far too slowly, but you will be glad to know that the hall and landing is finished, the paperhanger having done his job on Friday. We expected him on Thursday, but he did not put in an appearance. He arrived at about 8:30 a.m. on Friday and by 10 a.m. June had been halfway around Ruislip to get the loan of a suitable ladder for him. Anyway he had finished ceilings and walls and departed on his way by 1-0 p.m., so that was that.

Susan is certainly making remarkable progress I quite agree, but if only she would improve her behaviour a little. She can be guaranteed to make as much trouble as possible out of any situation (this morning she managed to upset her fried breakfast over the carpet) and she is now being copied faithfully by Carol. However a year or so should make a lot of difference*. During the week she walked off with someone’s two year old child she found playing outside her own house. When June carted her back the mother was out looking for her in some agitation.

Glad to hear that Mr Palmer is much improved.

So you are having trouble with the electric oven. Not all that long since you had it, so should not have gone wrong yet surely.

So far the slugs have only had one of the sweet peas but they have made extensive inroads into the asters. Had another go at the lawns yesterday and they had certainly grown a lot in a week. The two main ones are now cut very short and more like a billiard table than they have been. The one in front of the French windows I have left largely uncut as I am still in the process of raising it. The back end of it is beginning to grow quite nicely now and it would be fair to say that the lawn is half finished now. No more earth seems to be available on the field so doubt if anything will be done to it this weekend. We have to go to church this afternoon as both Susan and Carol have pieces to say. They are not 100% of course, but seemed in fairly good spirits.

They have bad news of Aunt Eda at West Ealing, who it is alleged is refusing to eat. We wonder if she is doing a Barbara Moore. This of course coincides with Delph’s holiday to Yorkshire.

Have a spot of trouble with the car at the moment. it seems there is something wrong with the engine as it is running very roughly at the moment and cutting out when the foot is off the accelerator. I took the plugs out this morning and cleaned them and closed the gaps to the correct amount, but it made no difference. Doug had a look at the carburettor and adjusted it, but still no difference. I shall have to put it in for servicing before we go anywhere in it.

The car that June will use has gear change on the floor. We have checked on that, so it is possible that the car is a 1961 issue. We await the lessons with interest. The final one will be in the morning of the day you arrive, so by the time you get here we may have an extra driver. The damage to the Anglia is being claimed through insurance, and it is to be hoped that it is the other person’s insurance. I did not know …

[There is a gap of about a dozen lines here due to a misplaced sheet of carbon paper.]

… to get a proper size for the job. It did not take very long, but it is a bit of a messy job. Bristol traffic getting more and more like London apparently, good place to keep out of.

Will accept a few tomato plants if you have them spare. With the failure of the dahlias we shall have some space for them.

I still  have not got round to doing much in the wine line. Mostly this is due to the temperature in the kitchen, which does not attract me to fiddle about in there in the evenings.

Hope you can fix your wheels and make a good barrow. You certainly have the need for one your end. Make sure that you make the barrow large enough for the job. I would say that you could afford to make it substantially larger than the wheelbarrow.

Resumed letter at 5 p.m. after break for dinner and afternoon church. It is the anniversary of the opening of the Sunday school, and a number of special events took place. One of the first was Susan’s appearance with three other girls to sing one verse of a song. I heard two of the girls quite clearly but although Susan’s mouth was moving, I could not hear that noise we usually get from it. I do not know what happened to her tongue.** Later on the little ones in a group of about five or six said a couple of verses of poetry, and I could hear Carol quite distinctly. I must say they pick the most difficult things for the children to say or sing, and even the general hymns today we’re an awful lot, I think I only knew one. All very tuneless.***

It is now a lot dryer, but very cold. I could have done with wearing a pair of gloves to church, and June was muttering something about putting on her fur coat. The wind that was about seems to have dropped a little, and everything outside is quiet and still and cold.

Had trouble with the garage in the week. Had put the bolt on the double doors from inside, and found that the catch on the side door would not move – it being closed at the time. I tried to remove the screws holding in the double doors so that one would swing enough to admit me, but I could not budge the screws. In the end I removed one of the panes of glass that had been cracked, and climbed in through the frame. The lock, having only been secured by three corners, had parted sufficiently to allow the spring to leave its seating and become loose inside. I oiled everything, put it back together and fixed a fourth holding screw, and now it is again in full working order. One pane of glass however requires to be replaced.

One or two people have been to look over the house next door, but we have not heard of any likelihood of a sale yet.

There was a good work study job going in Harrogate (Yorkshire) on this week’s list but we decided not to apply. By the way, talking about work, I had the tip off from the acting L.D.C. Staff Side chairman that the Acton station staff had held a vote and decided against our scheme on a permanent basis by 11 votes to 3. That of course started a rumpus and I went down to acting to see him to tell him of the consequences etc. We get on quite well, and he took all the points raised and promised to have another go at his chaps despite the vote. The S.M. was also told to use his influence. McD, not satisfied that everything was being done, sent Lay down the next day to see him again, and he arrived just in time to be told by him that he had been successful in getting four weeks’ extension to enable any criticism to be dealt with. A meeting is being held today to make a list of them. Most of the trouble stems from an overzealous Acting Supervisor who is mightily disliked by the staff.

By the way (again) I told Susan that I could not hear her singing her song at church this afternoon and she said “Well that’s all right Daddy you should have put your hearing aid in.” What next?

Our lilac is flowering very well on the Benns’ side of the hedge but apart from that we have nothing in flower at the moment.

We are looking forward to your visit which will not be long now. Which way are you coming this time? Query A30.

Well that is it again for another week, hope you are both well. Love from us all.

*Alec died fifty years later still hoping I would turn into a good little girl, and never realised that a certain amount of input from the parents is required – and not the sort that is administered with, literally, a firm hand.

**I had learned by now that whatever I did would be wrong.

***This brings up an interesting point: we were sent to the Methodist Sunday School, despite Alec and June being nominally CofE (neither was devout nor, in particular, interested beyond paying minimal lip service). The official reason for this was that the CofE nearest us was ‘too high church’, but I suspect that in fact the extra five minutes it would have taken to walk there was what counted. The Methodist Church was quite new, with good facilities, and it was a much easier journey – a straight line which in later years we could navigate by ourselves, and only one road to cross. It was, however, all a bit different from what Alec was used to – and the hymns and readings would no doubt have been taken from a different selection.