My dear Mother

So sorry I never wrote to you at Totland Bay & by this time you are back & I hope all the better for your holiday. I expect you had nice weather & enjoyed the rest. You never do want to go.

Eggs etc arrived today and we hope to have buttered eggs tomorrow morning for breakfast. Your face is fat in that photograph is’nt it, but p’raps you are fatter nowadays.

How were all the horses & how’s Louis Anderson is he alright. Was’nt he the only Anderson in France?

Wud you send some more eggs. That cake was awfully good. I must send some more thick clothes home. Such a clatter as Topher is always saying.

We have a dear little kitten in our mess, our mascot we call it, black and white.

Best love to all

Yr loving son

Richard.

In the Second World War, my grandmother Nell would send my mother breakfast by post – she used puffed wheat (the un-sugared kind) to pack one or two fresh eggs in an empty cocoa tin. Presumably Gertrude is doing much the same, but sending the eggs to France rather than Bletchley.