Tourettes – August 5th, 1947

Another letter. Ian appears to be feeling better.

Dear Mum and Dad,

I received last Saturday the packet containing the socks and Dad’s letter and today I received your letter of the 2nd. I am sending this letter by air mail – this may complicate matters since this letter may arrive before its’ predecessor.

First of all, I want to hasten to reassure you about my condition – I am feeling much better now, but I have gone into this much more fully in my preceeding letter. I will not waste any more of my precious paper on the subject. Today Miss S arrives at Tourrettes and tomorrow she will be coming to see me. I will afterwards write to you. I had a card from her the other day from which it appears that one has not received my letter and so I don’t think that I will have put her out at all.

I was very interested to hear about Miss S’s nephew – he sounds a very nice fellow – and I very much regret that fact that I shall be unable to make his acquaintance.

Since my last letter I have had a very interesting time. On Sunday we set out at ten to six for the Gorges du Verdon – by car, of course. At seven-twenty we met a family of cousins – six in number. At about half-past eight we had a puncture and spent quite a time repairing this. When we go to the Gorges we saw a magnificent bridge which I photographed (by the way thanks for the extra reel, Dad). It is 450 ft high and after the bridge the cliffs rise much higher. The road – only opened three weeks ago – follows the edge of the cliffs and when it would otherwise become too steep it goes into a series of short tunnels. About 11.15 we stopped to prepare dinner and this we started at about 11.45. It was a terrific meal (I don’t know whether I ate or drank more heavily) which lasted nearly three hours. Everybody was very merry towards the end and afterwards we set off once more and all went well till we reached the village of Aiguines where the cousin’s motor broke down. A lorry for towing had to be sent for and did not arrive until about 5.00. However, we had quite a good time in Aiguines sitting and talking and drinking in the shade of the trees in the centre of the village. Happily it was the day of the village band fete and we were entertained by the village which made up for any lack of musical skill by its tremendous enthusiasm. About 5.30 we got going once more following the cousins’ car which was on tow and every few minutes the tow-line parted and the procession would stop while readjustments were made. Eventually we reached Anfo – a smallish town. Here our party met some more cousins quite by chance and we went and had supper in their rooms – they were on holiday at Nups. I had met them before at Toulon when I ate the mayonnaise which made me feel ill – and the other cousins went on to Draguignan – their home – where we joined them at about 11.30 and where we spent the night. Before leaving Draguignan on Monday morning we visited a wine factory and here all the works and processes were fully explained to me and I drank some straight from the vat. We left D at about 9.30, arriving at Fayence about an hour later – here we spent a long while at the house of some more cousins and we did not get back to ‘Le Lac’ until about 12.45.

This morning I spent in visiting the country house of somebody rather like Mabel, in going for a walk WS in their forest (Mr. G’s I mean) and in helping to clear a field of stones. Over the weekend I hope to be visiting Grasse and Cannes but otherwise I don’t know if I am doing anything special.

Well, I am sorry if this letter is nearly illegible (your last was!) and a little bit scrappy but I am going easy on the paper. I hope you are all in the best of health as I am,

Your loving son
Ian

PS: It is raining here for the first time in months.

PS: Miss Smith has just left ‘Le Lac’. She is very keen that Jean should return to London with me, and she broached this plan to the Girauds, who seem to be equally keen. She is writing to you at once and you will probably have received two letters by the same post. I am more or less neutral on the matter, except that I think it might be preferable for the visit to be returned this year since it would leave next year free. If this is going to put you to the slightest inconvenience, I have only one thing to say – refuse unconditionally to entertain the idea. It will make very little difference to me one way or the other. I explained to Miss S the difficulties which I thought might be in the way and I believe that she is now fully cognisant with the situation – or so much so as I am. However, I say once again that should this project be to the smallest extent unacceptable to you there must be no question of y our answer – it must be a NO. Postman’s here, can’t write more.