12 February 1940

12.2.40

Dear Angela
Received your letter last week, so it has taken about three weeks to come over. If you sent your letters straight home (that is billets) I would only get them one day sooner, and as we are still hoping to get back to Sunderland you may as well send them to Sunderland. But you can do as you please.
I have turned a “crook” in the last week ----- no not quite a burglar. I will explain. As you know we have a job to get a week end leave. Well last week a pal and I wanted to go home and give mam and dad a surprise. I wrote to my uncle, who is in the army, and he sent me a letter as if dad had written it asking me to go home, ------ that got my permit. I then took a hand in the dealings, and wrote a letter as if my pals mother had been writing, I was quite “motherly” telling him not to get his feet wet or he would catch cold etc. ----- this obtained a permit for him. We then discovered that we had not enough money for the fare, so we rode the 50 miles and got home at 10 am after starting at 6.45 am. We have just returned - in the train as the snow was too deep to ride. Well that is all to say about my “forgery”, ----- it was quite exciting riding before dawn in the dark.
I suppose you will have heard by now that we have had the coldest winter for45 years. The snow thawed last week but last night a fresh fall of about one foot has arrived.
I hope that you got through your finals OK. I have some exams in about a months time but I am just going to hope for the best, it won’t be much use. Although it is a little late, I wish you many happy returns for your birthday. I don’t know whether I told you but I was sixteen on November 10th 1939.
We had “pancake Tuesday” last week, it is a day when everyone eats a kind of flat cake which is cooked in a frying pan, it is an old religious custom. Do you have a “pancake Tuesday” in America? Next Wednesday is “Valentine Day” it is a day when you send comic cards which express your feelings towards someone, no name is put on them however. Do you have Valentines in America? I will explain about the “flicks”, it is a slang term for the films, it comes from the days when they used to flicker on the screen. The other sentence which you couldn’t understand is:- if a person pays two shillings he can buy two one-shilling seats, and as he does not need two seats and he wouldn’t pay for a “boy friend” it works itself out. Do you understand now?
We are now doing America in Geography and it is a terrific size compared with England. California seems to get very little snow or rain and I think you should be thankful that you do not get our weather.
I must close now, please excuse writing as I am half asleep after a hectic week end at home and getting up in the “middle” of the night to ride 50 miles on my bicycle which is just about falling to bits.
I close now wishing you
All o’the best
Harold