Eva to the family:

Dear Alec June Susan & Carol

Many thanks for June’s letter. I am very glad the doctor says there is nothing seriously wrong with your mother. I expect she is feeling the strain of years of hard work without much holidays or chance to rest. I do hope they will soon see a house or a bungalow they fancy, they are difficult to come by these days as I don’t think there is all that much building going up. Houses this way are fetching a good price & that cuts both ways.

Susan is quite coming on with her writing also drawing. I expect they have been busy in the garden these last few days, it’s been really lovely. This morning although a peculiar sky it has not rained yet. (Leon says it’s just started.)

The men hope to finish today thank goodness. There is an awful smell of paint & pickled onions down here as Dad has done eight jars & I have them in the kitchen cupboard & every tie I open a drawer we get a whiff of onion.

Spencers were going for their holiday & the morning when they should have gone Ian developed chicken pox; Mr S doesn’t mind and hopes Ann will catch it as well.

Dad has been busy cutting all the hedges again, the long one on the lawn behind the flower bed was awful, thought we should never finish picking up the stuff, it hadn’t been cut for two years. We are still selling beans & tomatoes & I suppose we shall soon have to be picking apples, there is no end to it.

Heels have gone to Croyd for a fortnight. Hope Alec can call in for a few hours before he goes to Cardiff this week.

The house at the bottom of our field is not sold yet they wanted £5,250, but this week it’s down to £4,850.*

I went into next door one afternoon with a cup of tea for the girl who is getting married in October, she was busy painting. They have a lovely Claygate fireplace in the fireplace in the front & a nice one at the back beige. She told me they are locking up the front two bedrooms & lounge & going to live in the back for the present so presume they are only finishing the back.

Mrs Marshall & Bessie & a friend opposite her are on a tour of Scotland (coach) for a fortnight.

They have a wedding at the beginning of October at St Peter’s but bells at Old Church but nothing for Sept. other than what they have done already.**

There are notices on the beach at the Pill telling people that there is an unexploded bomb in the mud also there may be several so it has scared people away. If the bomb goes off I don’t think we shall be affected by it. Apparently they have lain in the mud for years; expect they dropped that night they came to bomb Weston.***

Well I think this is all for now so will close with love to you all.

from

Mum & Dad

*£114,000 or thereabouts in 2020 money.

**I confess I don’t know what it means except possibly that with St Peter’s being a new church they may not have had their bells installed yet and the wedding peal would have to be rung elsewhere, and that there were no other bookings for September except what was already known about.

***This was in June 1942, and was actually two nights. I haven’t (so far) been able to pin down the particular bomb that turned up in 1960, but the most recent one appeared in the vicinity of the local ASDA in 2018!