Sunday 3rd March 1940

Lazy day. No parades except roll call. Didn’t wash or get a shave until 10 o’clock (filthy fellow) and then Sid and I both shaved and had a shower. Bloody cold but we felt fine and clean afterwards!

Two lengthy pontoon “schools” in the tent, one this morning and one this evening. Won 55 mils in the morning and 130 mils in the evening. Lovely play, the second time; I couldn’t make a mistake.

Ron, Sid and I strolled across to see Stan in hospital, before lunch. There was little to do; we’d put our names down for a trip to Jerusalem and drawn blanks. Tel-Aviv, Jaffa and Rehovot were all out of bounds owing to a spot of civil rioting. Later even Gedere Village (wherever that is) was verboten.

This afternoon, Sidney and I strolled across the scrub, around a hill (where an Arab cowherd sang in monotonous, weird tones) and to the side of the road. Sid talked (and I listened, smoking peacefully) of ideal world states and the probable end of the war. We sat by the road a couple of hours, reading and writing. Sometimes we’d look up and see the traffic go by. It wasn’t always military traffic and then I tried to pretend that it was an English road, that Sid and I were not in uniform and that there was no war. But the landscape was wrong!