HMB 27/2/1918
My dearest Father
Thank you most awfully for the very welcome gift of £10 which arrived safely. Do you wish to have an official letter of thanks to show your committee or will this do? We are most awfully delighted with the grant which will be most tremendously useful.
I hope you are flourishing all of you. It is beastly wet here just now which is a bore. I spend all my spare time gardening or playing hockey, that is if the weather will let me. We have got a hockey match here next Sunday, or rather up at the camps; our X1 against a scratch pack of VADs. I hope we shall lick them but we are pretty rotten.
I have got a cold but only a small one which doesn’t bother me at all.
My boss was away for two days last week so I was left in charge of the show which made me quite busy. Our sick orderly has recovered and returned to his duties so I have a little less on my shoulders now.
I could do with a little money but not more than £10. I’m afraid you’ll say the last lot went quickly but I had to pay the washerwoman and have had several things to subscribe to lately including a wedding present for Miss Loveday so it hasn’t been entirely “blued”!
We had an awfully good show here last night: a troupe of Belgians came over, all opera singers, musicians, actors and actresses and two comics and gave a ripping concert and play. We enjoyed it immensely!
Fancy poor old George Allott being dead. How we shall miss him at Tothill in the future.
What a rotten photo that was of Nancy Swan in the Sketch: it might have been anybody. When is she to be married?
Do ask Mother or Molly to make enquiries with Dorothy Mass about the Staniland girl.
We had the base commandant up to tea last week: he is a pleasant bird! He knows Lady Swettenham.
Do look up in Kelly and see who Lord Ellenborough is and if it mentions a daughter of his called Kitty.
Sister has just come back from sick leave at home and says we may consider ourselves lucky to get so much grub here, but she lives in a residential part of Hampshire so they may be worse off than you.
I must stop now. Best love to you all, your loving D.
About Alford 