Easter Sunday
Hi Folks:
Well here it is 8 P.M. and still quite daylight; in fact it's not dark over here until usually around ten or later, so you see we feel almost at home as far as time in concerned.
It started out as a horrible day, blowing and heavy fog; but by noon it was completely clear, and it's been a beautiful sunshiny day. Yesterday afternoon we again went to Lady Ryder's and there got two invitations out, one for last night and one for this afternoon.
After getting the invites we came back here to prepare for supper. Ray was having a bath and was just finishing when I walked in to open the window to let some steam out. It was one of these weighted kind that has to be locked down. As soon as I unlocked it, up it flew and the huge pane smashed into a thousand pieces and flew all over. My arm and shoulder was scratched, and Ray had his finger badly cut. It cut an artery and he had to have four stitches to close it, but it didn't stop him or us from going out.
Don, Tommy and I went about 3 ½ miles out of town (on the last bus) to get to our house. We really had a grand time talking and playing bridge. Afterwards we had lunch and then had to walk back. It took us just and hour and boy! were we tired.
Don went on sick parade yesterday morning only to find he had scabies of all things. They say he must have picked it up on the boat. This morning he had to go for treatment, and by the time he got back it was too late to go to Church so we just sat around and got ready for this afternoon.
I polished the buttons of my new uniform & had everything spotless and went down to dinner of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, carrots, greens, baked potatoes & gravy, plums & cookies & tea.
We dashed through that & caught our bus to go to Lord and Lady Lee's. After getting lost we arrived to find apparently no one around but later found him sitting in the Library in a pair of pants Wally Clarke wouldn't wear & a brown tweed jacket. He greeted us kindly and showed us around the house and introduced us.
Just after we were nicely seated, got the ungodly idea of cleaning up the gardens. With the shortage of help have all grown up, and where they were once beautiful, they're a sad mess now. They handed Don a pair of clippers, & gave me a spade and we started- Sir John, Lady Madeline, two daughters and ourselves. We only worked for an hour. Results? A handful of blisters, muddy shoes and [muddy] uniform.
After that he showed us around his huge estate, his farms and gardens. The flowers and shrubs are really beautiful. Boy, Mum, you'd really have been in your glory. The camellias and rhotadendrums were magnificent and every colour. They have every kind of tree imaginable: green, flowering or fruit. everything from figs to Lebanon spruce, or bamboo to maple-simply everything rare or otherwise.
We then went back for tea and later went down through rose arbors, through all the greenhouses where they grow peaches, grapes, cucumbers, tomatoes-simply anything you could think of. So you can imagine just how much I enjoyed it.
Don & I coming back had a lot of laughs of things that happened, such as Sir John jumping over the chesterfield for cigarettes and shaking hands with us while straddling the library window.
Well, enough for now. Write soon with all the news.
Love
Bill
