A.A. Laporte Payne letter to Muriel September 1917

Embossed notepaper headed:

Christ Church Vicarage

North Finchley N and struck through

61 Marine Avenue

Hove

Sussex

Undated September 1917

Darling,

After a quick but slumbersome journey I arrived with the rain at Brighton, and found Mother & Father here.  I am staying with them.  I surprised them with the amount of my luggage but I was determined to enjoy mufti for a few days but of course I had to travel down in uniform.

I do hope you were not very tired after the unwelcome attentions of our night visitors. On my way back Mr. Jordan ran me in for riding without a light.  It would have been amusing if he had reported me to the Superintendent whose house I had just left.  However the offer of a cigarette accepted appeased the official anger at such wanton smashing of the laws of our country, and I gained my bed in my own home and not the local lock-up.

Brighton bores me, but I am glad to be with my people once again and away from their duties.

My plans are as follows – subject to alterations and revisions, of course, by a higher authority – your ladyship. I leave here Monday morning, and arrive in town to entertain the Colonel if possible graced by female society – if not well he must go without.

Then I await your majesty’s commands. What I should like would be go to some sea-side place – not like this London-by-the-sea with a desert of asphalt peopled by a nomadic tribe from the East.  How would you like it?  Perhaps some good Samaritans could be inveigled into chaperoning you at such a place.  I don’t like to suggest it in case I annoy people by troubling them so much.

I could book rooms at a hotel somewhere if it were possible and enjoy another week by the sea.

However I am probably expecting too much.

Please give my love to Mrs Cross

With much love to you dearest & kisses (paper)

Ever your

Arch.