Getting some fun out of life ...



Hello folks - Stella and I have had a jolly busy day off, spring cleaning the cottage. (Frankly like a lot of girls these days we are just doing the bits that show). I'm cooking pea soup tonight - would you like the recipe? My tripe casserole was a disaster, but you can't go wrong with this soup. I was just settling down by the fire with Stalin (the cat, not the dictator), and Billie Holiday, when I noticed we had a couple of questions from new friends.

Jo, I can well believe your 17 year old students disbelief about the stockings! Tell them we have to fight some of the chaps for the few available pairs - they say they wear silk stockings in flight for warmth ... Yes, I know what you are thinking! I shall be jolly glad next time I get stuck out on a delivery to a US base. The GIs are tremendous fun, and there are always stockings!

Geeta, thank you for asking about flying. I shall answer you properly tomorrow - my eyelids are drooping. In the meantime, dear John Magee's lovely poem tells you all you need to know about why pilots fly. Like a lot of my friends, we lost poor John when he was only nineteen.

More later. Yours ever,

Evie x

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,-and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of-wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor even eagle flew-
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God

‘High Flight’ by John Gillespie Magee, Jr – Spitfire pilot, No 412 Fighter Squadron RCAF.  Killed 11 December 1941, aged 19

Acknowledgement: "Reproduced by kind permission of This England Publishing Ltd."