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[Page 24]
Heliopolis, Cairo
Sunday night 24/1/15
My dear Wife,
I wrote to you last night from the Khedivial Club whilst I was waiting for dinner with Giblin & 2 other Cl[earing] Hosp[ital] officers. I had soup, a beef cutlet (from a whole rib of beef) – and several other things. The waiter insisted that it was not veal, but beef in this Country is usually from very small kinds of cattle, and certainly it was not a bit like anything but a fine grained beef. I had fish with prawn sauce (before the beef). With the beef there were small potatoes fried in oil, crisp, and a salad of cold boiled cucumber drenched with olive oil which I did not like. Then there were fresh strawberries in some kind of firm frothy cream – very nice. I finished with some Gruyère cheese & roll. The bread here is always in small rolls and nice and light. The natives carry about rings of bread in baskets for sale, & the rings are about 1 inch thick and 6 inches across, But this is only used by the natives. I went back to the ship about ¼ to 10 last night to get out the orders for disembarkation. Both the No 1 General & the No 1 Clearing [Hospitals] left the ship at 9.10 a.m. by train for Cairo. We brought our full Hospital Equipment. The journey takes 3½ hours & is about 90 miles through perfectly flat country intensely cultivated and without fences. There are many native villages with houses continuous with one another & built of sundried bricks – like sand. There were occasionally small dome shaped chimneys & flat roofs made of