Ravenswood,

47 Bristol Road,

Weston-super-Mare,

Somerset.

Saturday, October 31, 1948.

Dear John,

Thank you very much for your letter. It was lying under the bed in the middle of my train set when I got up yesterday. I don’t know how it got there, but I know it wasn’t there when I went to sleep. I could understand almost all of it, except I didn’t know what manure was, so Mummy told me and we laughed a lot. And she said she couldn’t believe you are a vegetarian, because you loved the Sunday joint, and bacon and eggs, and fish and chips so much.

After breakfast I am going to the newsagent down the hill at the end of Bristol Road to get Buster’s newspapers and tobacco for his pipe. It’s called Three Nuns and an ounce costs four shillings. He always gives me extra money for my comics, The Beano and The Dandy, and a packet of sherbet lemons or a Mars Bar. I buy the sweets one week and the chocolate the next. I like Dennis the Menace in The Beano best and Korky the Cat in The Dandy. He reads his newspapers in the drawing room and sometimes I still sit on his lap. We play this game where he suddenly opens his legs wide and I fall through, but he always catches me before I hit the floor. His arms are as big and strong as tree trunks.

I hope he will take me to another Rugby game this afternoon. [Buster calls it “Rugger”]. The Weston-super-Mare team has its own club. We went there last Saturday. Buster bought a ticket at the turnstile, but he didn’t have to pay for me. We were playing Bridgwater, which he said was quite near here. It was cold and windy, so we walked up and down the touchline a lot, like the other men who were watching the game, so we could stay as close as we could to the where the two teams were. Buster had his shooting stick with him, and sometimes we would stop long enough for him to open it at the top and make a small seat for himself to sit on. The other end is sharp and sinks into the ground when he sits on it. It was too tall for me to sit on, but I didn’t mind. All the players got very muddy and sweaty, especially the forwards. We lost. Our team only scored one try almost at the end of the game, but Bridgwater scored five I think.

Love, Johnny-Boy