Craft Swap Forum is celebrating it's second birthday this month and we are again making books to auction for the forum charity. I am participating in 3 books and this is the first - Simon's 'Going Postal' book. I chose to use 3 methods of communication during the first and second World Wars.

The front of the envelope has a copy of an envelope used by my grandmother during the first World War to send money to my grandfather in France. The envelope is firstly marked 'Missing' and then marked 'Wounded' - it finally arrived at my grandfather's bedside in a military field hospital. The cost of sending this Registered Letter was just one penny.


The insert is decorated on the front with a copy of a telegram sent by my father to my mother during the second Worl War to tell her what time he would be home on leave.

The back of the insert has some extracts from the only love letter my mother kept from my father during the second World War and a small picture of him in Navy uniform and without the name of his ship on his hat. He was sunk twice during the war and my mother put his survival down to an old superstition - bearing in mind he couldn't swim I just put it down to it not being his time. When my brother was born at the beginning of the war his face was covered by a cawl, superstition has it that if you carry a cawl you will never drown and my father carried my brother's cawl throughout the war.