Gloster
Sept 28th
Dear Mother
Very many thanks for your letter & the puttees & nail scissors, which I got today. So glad to hear Jim is all right again, I expect he’ll pick up fairly quickly now.
Really today is too awful for words, persistent rain & bitterly cold, miserable. I’m just going in to Gloster now to dine at the Club, & be comfortable for a few hours anyhow.
I have been up to the Fieldings a lot, every day in fact, so I thought I’d give today a miss & of course it’s just the sort of day one would love to go up. I play billiards with the old man a lot, so of course he’s always asking me up. I bought that Berlin puzzle for ‘em & of course they do nothing else all day. Tell Ben Nell is as nice as ever; she & I are going out to tea tomorrow to an old gipsy woman to have our fortunes told !!! (I can hear Dreda & Jane saying “what nonsense”!)
Good news from the front, eh? But I’m afraid the casualty lists will be heavyish when they are published; but it’s got to be done-
What a dismal prospect from the mess window! Rain & mist & a dark leaden sky. Ugh, how I hate it, & we have no fireplace or stove in the mess!
Love to all yr loving son
Ted
My mother commented on this in the 1980s:
It would be fascinating to know what the fortune-teller told them.
When I was a child, Nell told me that a fortune-teller had told her many years before that “your man will never be killed or drownded”.
My mother went on:
It was probably Mrs Ridler, the gardener’s wife, who had told Nell that she would meet her second, and true, love at a party and who made other true predictions.
Ted and Nell, Autumn 1915
