My Dear People,
Just a line to let you know I am still well. Our leave finishes tonight & we are going back to Hurdcott Camp directly. I have had a very enjoyable holiday & I have been wonderfully interested in the things I have seen. I have seen hundreds of places that I have read about & they seem quite familiar when you do see them.
Of course London is at its worst now, at night all the lights are shaded & the streets are almost dark on account of Zepps. No Church bells are rung & Big Ben does not strike for the same reason. Also it is winter & very cold & bleak when you are outside. Inside the houses it is nice & warm as they have them heated with fires & steam radiators.
I have got a lot of post-card views of London & I will send there to you directly.
They will be very interesting to anyone who is keen on history. London is an endless mass of streets, all more or less alike. Our program was to stroll round, be well lost half an hour after we left the hotel, see as much as we could & when we wanted to go home get a taxi & say "Palace Hotel, Bloomsbury" to the driver & that was the only way we could get home. They say that no man knows London & I am rather inclined to believe it.
Yesterday we went on a dray for a conducted tour to the principal places in London, there were a lot of soldiers "two drays full".
We went to the Tower, St. Pauls, Westminster Abbey, past Buckingham Palace & a lot of other important places. It only cost 4/- each & I enjoyed it very much as the fellow who was showing us round has been at it a good while & knows the run of things (he was one of Cook's men).
The Streets in London are very narrow, never saw one as wide & nice as King William Street, Adelaide; the widest of them being about the same as Rundle St & they fairly hum with traffic. Taxis, Motor Buses & in a few streets. Cable tram-cars, there are very few horse-drawn vehicles at all & the place fairly stinks with petrol. The motor buses seem to carry most of the traffic. Taxis are fairly dear -/8d a mile & -/6d extra for each person over two, so when four or five get in it does not take long to run away with half a dollar. We went for a ride in a tube this afternoon - they are electric trains running away underground. You go down in lifts, & they have lines running to almost any part of London. They are cheap travelling & quick & it was quite hot down there today, so I guess it is pretty warm in summer.
Some of the streets in the heart of the City are so narrow that only one vehicle at a time can go along them, but out in the newer parts they are not so bad. All the buildings here are very dirty on the outside with smoke & dirt, you do not see nice clean buildings like there is in Australia. Even places that have only been up a few years are almost black. Anyone who has not read or heard much of London would not enjoy a trip here at all, but when you have heard of such places as the Strand, Piccadilly & all those other places you like to see them.
As to the girls, here a good many of them are taking on the men's jobs. I have seen some driving delivery vans & all the bus Conductors are girls & they seem to get along very well at it. Of course they appreciate a glad eye the same as Australian girls, but most of those I have seen seem rather nice. They have about the same quantity of "cheek" as the Australian girls, although I heard a bit of (Kiss me Sergeant) from some of them, but yours truly doesn't allow them to fascinate him, or have anything to do with them at all.
We have been staying among the Toffs here, a lot of Officers (English, Canadians & A.I.F.) & a lot of other swells, ladies etc. We were about the only rankers here, so we had to be on our best behaviour.
Well, I must close now as it is nearly time to catch our train. We will have to get a taxi as otherwise we would never find the Station. It will be about two o'clock when we get home tonight & I bet we will be tired.
Hoping you are all well
I remain,
Your Loving Son and Brother,
Tom.
