Welsh Journals

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1883696 Cadet Lewis, A., C Coy, 168th O.C.T.U., Heysham Towers, Morecombe, Lanes. Dear Lynette, July 27th, Sunday. I'm sitting on a folding chair (wood) in a triangle of dirty waste with a three-sided collection of bathing huts round me, wearing khaki trousers, braces hanging down the back, sun on my bare skin, soldiers blancoing thin equipment, middle of Sunday morning, having been on church parade, then on a tour of barracks deputising for a bloke who's run off to be with his woman, and due for another tour of cookhouse and mess in half an hour. So I am taking a breath of friendship with you in my isosceles triangle of Hindu mud, and send you greetings on this holy day. I'm very worried about you, lass. It seems to me you're having a damned sight more than your share and I'm bitterly sorry the world is what it is-it can be almost anything good or anything evil, or neither I'm waiting to hear from you and I wish you the courage of your suffering. I wish I could come and see you-I'll do so when I get leave in November or December, but until then I'm rigid here, I'm afraid I'll be like Keidrych- no leave for 9 months-when I do get it. I've received the contract from Allen & Unwin and it looks very grand They're fixing the price at 3/6d. — 12 per cent royalties-and if the poems succeed they will publish my short stories next year. They've read them and seem quite keen. They want to see my novel too, but I'm not sending it to them. I'm going to re-write it after the war. I'm definite about it, now. You'd like this place-it has a little of Cwmcelyn about it-flat quick- sands where crabs crawl about at dusk, little black hunchbacks in mud pools of vermillion and rose. And a pub the sailors from the harbour drink in-a Welsh boat from Holyhead put in this week and I've been drinking with the Gogleddi. We sang Welsh, too, near closing time. The cliffs are grassy and corrupt-a zoo, very decrepid, with a browned-off sickly bear and two scruffy monkeys, crowns the fields and the gorse bushes drift with odours of Bryll Cream-the R.A.F. at night manoeuvers with the tripper girls. The church on the cliffs is very fine-rugged white sandstone, with graves-a ruined chapel and stone coffin beds. Like Dylan's grandfather who wouldn't be buried in Llanstephan because your legs get wet if you twitch them