Month: November 2018

23 Hull Road, Blackpool

“60 cigarettes & 4 bars of chocolate per week.”

Albert starts his letter on 26th October, two days after his previous letter home. I can’t help but think that Albert was a little lonely, occupying his free time in letter writing and solitary trips to cinema and theatre. He sends my Grandfather cigarettes for his birthday, which seems a rather shocking sort of present now, but normal for the times; everyone who has ever watched a film set during World War Two will know how scarce and sought after ‘smokes’ were. A weekly ration of 60 cigarettes was a privilege reserved for those who served. Albert is making do and making the best of it; washing his own socks, sharing a room with two strangers and bearing the cold weather of the North-West Coast. In my opinion he rather skimps on the number of pants he deems necessary, but these were different times!

23 Hull Road is, as it was in 1941, a guesthouse near the seafront. I doubt it was so uniformly terracotta all those years ago.

Dear Everybody, I shall start this letter today and post it to-morrow after we move to our new billet. First, I will say that I got your first letter on Friday, and the parcel with the socks on Saturday. I hope that by now you will have got my parcel. As regards clean things, I shall try to wash my own collars, socks and handkerchiefs, if I am at all able to, but I think that it will be best to send home shirts pyjamas vests and pants. I think you could perhaps send to my new address a parcel consisting of : 2 vests, 2 pairs pants, I pyjamas & coat, my bicycle torch, my black shoes I wore to Padgate, some soft rag for brass cleaning. You can take the money out of my pay (when it comes).

Next Friday, we receive the magnificent sum of 10/- [10 shillings], and that has to last us for a fortnight, so I cannot see my £2 which I have left last me for long. I am sending a few cigarettes as a birthday present, and when we get paid I shall send some more. I have also got some chocolate for Auntie Lizzie’s birthday, but cannot send it until I have a box to pack it in, or at least some cardboard. We are allocated 60 cigarettes & 4 bars of chocolate per week, for which we have a token. So if you want anything like that, I can get it. There is not such a shortage of other goods either, I see tins of beans, fish & meat roll, paste and other things in the shops, so I can try for them if you want. I am having 2/- per week taken out of my pay and put into P.O. savings. I expect to be able to manage on 15/- per week after the next fortnight. By booking early for the theatres I should get a good seat for 2/6d. I got in easily on Friday by arriving at 6.20 (the show began at 7.30) and had a good seat at half a crown. I could probably have done the same last night. I enjoyed both operas very much indeed, and really cannot decide which one I enjoyed more.

I also enquired yesterday about W.E.A. classes which are held near here. There is one every Friday on “Appreciation of Music” which I shall probably attend. On Mondays there is the R.A.F musical society, meetings with gramophone records, and I shall probably look in there next week.

This afternoon, as I believe I have said, I hope to go to Cleveleys, I can tell more of that on Monday. Looking around Blackpool I have succeeded in finding some fairly good shops, and have also unearthed the local library and art gallery. By means of diligent searching I hope to find some parks one day, as I am told that there are some concealed in the less frequented parts of the town. I have written to work when I sent back a form for the making up of pay, and to Havant and to Jean (at Branstone). Later I must send to the Harts, to Phil & to Raymond. I don’t like any of the picture postcards here so I have not wasted my money on them. Have you seen Pat lately? Is he still at the docks or is he now elsewhere?

Monday. We are now at our new billet, 21 of us altogether, and 3 in our particular bedroom, which is on the 2nd floor. The 2 I am with were not in my previous billet and seem quite nice chaps. This billet is, I think, better than the other, though I have only been here for dinner. However there was more to eat, and a radio on, which, though Forces of course, enabled me to hear the news. I now learn there is no pay until Friday Week. However, I think I shall manage on it.

“By means of diligent searching I hope to find some parks one day”

We went to Fleetwood yesterday on the tram. The trams are half price for Forces, and to Fleetwood the distance of about 6 miles I should say, the fare was only 4d. From the shore there, we could see the hills of Cumberland in the misty distance, and they looked very fine in the hazy yellow light. To the east were the Pennines, though I do not know what part – considerably north of the Peak though. Perhaps one time, if I can afford it, Auntie Edie could get me accommodation for a 48hrs leave there. I see coaches run every Sunday to Keswick & suchlike at about 10/- but by the time I can go, they will probably have stopped. In winter the snow is no doubt quite deep here. It is cold enough already as the wind blows off the Irish Sea, as that was especially noticeable at our last billet, where there was no fire. At Fleetwood I saw many trawlers & and Isle of Man steamer. There are also very many trawlers, though most of them seemed to be in the dock. We could see the balloon barrage at Barrow too.

This morning, before leaving Church Street, a pair of socks arrived from Auntie Daisy, but as yet I have had no time to try them on. I shall go back there tonight and collect my books, writing pad & other articles which I left behind. I shall write to Branstone soon: I have already sent one there for Jean. I must also write to those others, so may not write to you again until I receive that parcel. Had better finish now so goodbye & lots of love from Albert.

The Last Birthday Wish

“Your Dad would endorse all I have said, you must take it as said from him through me”

IMG_2268
Great-Grandparents Jane and John Mabey, with Great-Aunt Ursie peeping over the hedge.

In 1941, when my Grandfather turned 52, it was my Great-Grandmother alone who sent him birthday wishes, for my Grandfather’s Dear Old Dad had passed away the summer before. She signs off with the lines quoted above, which reminded me of something my Mother said about herself and my Dad – that over the years they ‘really did become as one’. They nearly got to 60 years together, my Mum and Dad. Such a long-lived union I won’t experience myself, but it seems that my Great-Grandparents certainly did. This is the last birthday wish I have in The Letters; Great-Grandmother died in 1944, so it seems just chance that this note survived. The ink and paper are so fresh and clean, the letter could have been written last month.

Branstone Oct 27th

Dear John, I must write a line specially for yourself on the occasion of your birthday. I wish I could do it with a lighter heart – but the distressing times we are living in are against it. I can only wish and hope that in the near future the dark cloud of war may have passed away and the sunshine of peace and good will may shine for you and yours. You can look back with satisfaction on the years that have passed. you have been a good son, husband and father and I pray God that the years to come will bring joy and happiness to you and yours. The war has prevented me from giving my usual gift of chocolate but I know that you value more my love and good wishes. Your Dad would endorse all I have said, you must take it as said from him through me.

Your loving Mother

And on the back of the letter, to alleviate the air of melancholy she may have detected in her writing, Great-Grandmother copied out a horoscope to amuse her son. “‘Ware women teachers I spose”, translates as “beware women teachers I suppose” – a little example of Isle of Wight dialect!

IMG_2271

 

 

The Jeaneth Bird

IMG_2239

Albert called my Mother “Jeaneth Bird.” Recently I found a Christmas card he sent her, in which he wrote “I had hoped to find a picture of the Jeaneth Bird in flight.” How tender that phrase appears to me, a sweet sentiment that brings forth the image of  little Jean  soaring like a skylark in a pale blue sky. Perhaps on the 24th October 1941, as he sat to write to his little sister, he imagined her amongst the migrating birds described in his letter to his parents and missed her too.

It is almost inconceivable now, in these always connected times, that a twenty year old man would trouble to write a two page letter to his ten year old sister. Or that a young man’s evenings would taken up with family correspondence and yearning for his bicycle and his gramophone records. In this letter Albert portrays Blackpool a little more favourably, editing out his homesick laments to his parents, but he shares his disappointment about the sustenance on offer. Food, the abundance or lack thereof, is a recurring theme in Albert’s letters.

Dear Jeaneth Bird,

I received your letter to-day and I have now started to reply to it. When I am moved to a more permanent billet, I shall send it along to Branstone. Now there are 3 of our family in billets, and only two left behind at home. In our billet there are 8 of us, and we have to do our own washing up. And we have to sweep our rooms etc, and we get up at 6am too.

I hear that Sybil and Barbara are thinking of getting moved, and you want to be with them, so they cannot be quite so bad as you sometimes make them out to be! I hope you are still getting “Excellents” for your French, and no order marks now. But your English is not always so good, and I am sending back your letter with corrections (If I remember to put it in that is). I am very glad that you now have a bicycle, you must hurry up and learn to ride it so that you can go out for rides with Mummy and Daddy. Do you know what make it is?

[SUNDAY] You are doing quite a lot of travelling by yourself now, more than I used to do when I was your age, though I suppose there is somebody to meet you at each end of the journey. Blackpool is quite a large town, and there are plenty of shops and lots of cinemas and theatres. There does not seem to be such a shortage of things here, although the apples we get are not at all good. If I am able to, I shall get you some hair clips! Then you will have no excuse for wearing those other old things. Blackpool is not very dark at nights either. There are some dim street lights, and the blackouts are very poor, but no-one seems to mind much. The trains & ‘buses run very late too – until 11 at night I believe. We have the trams outside our house, so it is quite like home in that respect. To-morrow, we are being moved to another billet, which, I hope, is better than this one. We have no supper at nights and not really enough at other times. It is quite chilly up here now (I expect it is warmer at home) and we have no fire, so I shall be glad to get out this afternoon.

I think I shall post this to-day but if  you want my address, Mummy will have it: you can let them send any letters to me, though I expect you will be too busy to reply yet. Give my love to Ped, & Grandma and all the Aunties and Uncle Dick.

xxxxxxx lots of love from Albert

My Mother was such a clever woman, it’s quite disconcerting to read Albert’s opinions about her academic abilities! I admire his modesty in not mentioning that he has gifted the money for her bicycle from his savings (see my previous post). He was a kind man and no doubt his words made her feel a little less lonely as she travelled alone from her ‘billet’ in Bournemouth to the Isle of Wight or Havant and back again. (My Mother was evacuated with her school to Bournemouth for most of the war).

I am sure this letter must have meant a lot to my Mum; she kept it for the rest of her life after all.