c/o Base Post Master M.E.F. Basrah [Basrah, Al (Basra)] Nov 4 Dearest Father. I am sending you a very large case of the very best dates, 48 boxes! Will you give some to my family including the Stanleys, and a box to Milly please with my love. You won't want 48 to keep the wolf from the door. We are having cloudy hot weather, preliminary I hope to rain. But it takes about a fortnight for the clouds to blow up enough for rain, I believe, and meantime until it comes the temperature is high and the sandflies beyond all words. I'm writing now at night and am distracted by them. They are worse than mosquitoes. I've just been out for a long walk with Mr Bullard (Revenue Dept) - the first time I've walked a step since May. It is still too dusty to be a very nice form of excercise [sic]; riding is better. At the Political Office I am beginning to reap profit from the long slow collecting and classifying of information - a job I'm always busy with. They send me down all the telegrams and reports that come in from the provinces with a request for a note on the people tribes and places mentioned. With any luck I can find and place most of them now - it's a great satisfaction. But the result is that I find it difficult to do any consecutive work in the office and if I want to write something I must bring it home. However that doesn't matter; it's so nice to be a spoke in the wheel, one that helps to turn, not one that hinders. Mother's letter of Oct 4 is the latest news I have from you, with a good account of Elsa. I love to think of Mother's addressing agricultural meetings; I've no doubt she has very useful things to say. It must be a great bore having no motors - or next to none. That's very different from us. They swarm in every shape, by land and water, and I frequently go out motoring in the dust of an evening with the I.G.C. Ever your very affectionate daughter Gertrude