s flat tidy at last, and have had it cleaned and
scrubbed. I have thrown away old papers and empty boxes, and can sit
down and sniff contentedly. No convoy-ite sees the difference!

[Page Heading: THE COMMUNAL LIFE]

I think I have learnt every phase of muddle and makeshift this winter,
but chiefly have I learnt the value of the Biblical recommendation to
put candles on candlesticks. In the "convoi Munro" I find them in
bottles, on the lids of mustard-tins, in metal cups, or in the necks of
bedroom carafes. Never is the wax removed. Where it drips there it
remains. Where matches fall there they lie. The stumps of cigarettes
grace even the insides of flower-pots, knives are wiped on bread,
and overcoats of enormous weight (khaki in colour, with a red cross
on the arm) are hung on inefficient loose nails, and fall down.
Towels are always scarce; but then, they serve as dinner-napkins,
pocket-handkerchiefs, and even as pillow-cases, so no wonder we are a
little short of them. There is no necessity for muddle. There never is
any necessity for it.

The communal life is a mistake. I wonder if Christ got bored with it.

On Sundays I always want to rest, and something always makes me write.
The attack comes on quite early. It is irresistible. At last I am a
little happy after these dreary months, and it is only because I can
think a little, and because the days are not quite so dark. I think the
nights have been longer here than I ever knew them. No doubt it is the
bad weather and the small amount of light indoors that make the days
seem so short.

I am going back to-morrow to the station, with its train-loads of
wounded men. I _want_ to go, and to give them soup and comforts and
cigarettes, but just ten days' illness and idleness have "balmed my
soul."

_22 February._--Waited all day for a car to come and fetch me away. It
was dull work as I could never leave the flat, and all my things were
packed up, and there was no coal.

_23 February._--Waited again all day. I got very tired of standing by
the window looking out on a strip of beach at the bottom of the street,
and on the people passing to and fro. Then I went down to the dock to
try and get a car there, but the new police regulations made it
impossible to cross the bridge. I went to the airmen opposite. No luck.

There is a peculiar brutality which seems to possess everyone out here
during the war. I find it nearly everywhere, and it entails a good deal
of unnec