Reveille at 6 o’clock instead of 5.30. Field Day1. We were shown how to put up a tent, and how to go out in stretcher parties, etcetera. Went into the town in the afternoon with Quinn and a chap called Crossland and had tea at Lyons’ café2. Went to Victoria Hall with Gurney, Quinn and Crossland and had a good time. Wet night. Received letter from Charlie to say he was going to start from Hitchin tomorrow night at 9 o’clock3.
“Field day”, now usually used metaphorically to describe a good day, is used here in its original, literal sense to mean a day spent in field activities. ↩
J. Lyons & Co., the same company as also famously imported tea, had a large and very successful nationwide chain of cafés. There would have been a Lyons’ café in most large towns at this time. Interestingly, though irrelevantly, Lyons was also the first company anywhere to incorporate computers into its business operations, which it did in the early 1950s. Lyons’ computing efforts were so successful that its computer business was later spun off, eventually forming part of ICL, now owned by Fujitsu. ↩
Charlie, having earlier joined the Royal Engineers, was about to be sent from Hitchin to the Dardanelles. ↩