Letter from Ursula Valentine to her husband John Valentine

Letter from Ursula Valentine to her husband John Valentine

Writes of her recent activities including shopping and national gallery concert. Mentions present of home made butter, progress of baby daughter and gardening. mentions telephone delay and hopes he will get leave soon.

1942-05-02

Four page handwritten letter

This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

EValentineUMValentineJRM420502

Start of transcription
No [underlined] 30 [/underlined] Lido
take that! May 2nd

My darling Johnnie,
I was awfully glad to get your letter of 30th April and to hear you had been having such a gay time. It’s probably not a bad thing to keep in touch with J. Tait Esq. seeing you’re his blue-eyed boy!
I’ve been gadding myself too. I went up to town yesterday to get some stockings (thin ones, because my ”blankets” are really a bit [underlined] too [/underlined] thick for this weather.) I haven’t been able to get anything at all in my size locally and had to try several of the big west end stores before I found what I wanted.

[page break]

I also bought Frances a tambourine from Hamleys & she is sitting beating it happily as I write. I took your racquet there to be re-strung. It will cost a guinea & take 10 days to a fortnight. I had to have the whole thing restrung & not just broken strings replaced because there were so many broken. I wanted them to send it dearest to you when finished, but they say they can’t get the packing materials now so I’ll have to fetch it and hope that you’ll be on leave round about then and take it back with you.

Afterwards I went to the National Gallery concert (Brahms Sonata no two) with Monica Barnard & she came back to tea

[page break]

here afterwards. It was a very pleasant day altogether – I do enjoy dressing up and pretending to be a lady!

I had the most lovely present this morning, from Mrs Howie – a pound of her home-made butter! It’s a lovely deep yellow colour this time, not pale as it usually was, and tastes simply delicious. I shall now be able to make a cake with the margarine ration.
Can you taste now & would you like some of the butter & another cake?

Frances is now starting to walk crabwise round her playpen, holding on terribly tightly all the while. She likes standing, and kneels up quite a lot too.

[page break]

I’m getting quite worried about the seeds. There’s no sign of the carrots and is a very sparse collections of onions, and the spinach & lettuce are very meagre too. Of course we did sow them thinly, and the ground is awfully dry, but I don’t dare to do much hoeing yet because you can’t see what’s what. The first row of peas & the broad beans are the only things making a decent showing. My herbs are looking up now & seem to have taken alright.

It’s a pity there’s such awful delay on the telephone, because I do so love to hear your voice. I hope to goodness you get some leave soon!

All my love to you, my dearest
Ursula.
Hope you received NS&N sent yesterday