14.9.68
[This letter starts off] (Read the other page first will you? I knew I’d do this someday!) [I'd begun to type on the wrong page.]
Page 2...
Dear Mum, Am writing this as I
finish off my breakfast so don’t be surprised if there are a few crumbs and
coffee stains on this letter. Only hope
they don’t send it at full rated as a result!
It’s my anniversary – the week since I had my FIRST breakfast here! And I’m still alive. Haven’t killed myself with my own cooking, I
mean, nor been knifed in Commercial Road, nor squashed to little bits of matter
in the Rush Hour. I have the radio
blaring in one ear and the tap dripping in the other, so things are a little
noisy: the radio never does anything but blare – I’ve got it turned right down
even now; it’s just that the morning programmes are all pop with screaming disc
jockeys, etc.
Well, what have I done since I
last wrote? I’ve done some more
composing – don’t know how you feel about that, but I had to do something to
occupy the old mind - the cooking and
ironing and washing, though a strain, wasn’t really using much brain! I’s a similar thing to that last thing, the
one that they did a bit of at the school.
It’s to be five songs this time, and I’m about half way through – quite
pleased with the first and third, and so-so about the second. [Can’t identify what these songs would be, though they probably still exist
amongst my old manuscripts.]
I’ve been going into the Centre
every day this week too, and doing some practice – still feel rather strange
there, and guess I will until I get started.
Remember I said I met Ann Gordon the other day, again, and she
apologised for not realising who I was the previous time, well, she also said
that she and Kiri T.K [te Kanawa, of
course] were to do a concert at the Overseas League or some such, and they
wanted a NZ pianist. Well, since at that
stage nothing definite was done because she wasn’t sure whether Kiri hadn’t
already got someone, but she said she’d get in touch, and finally, yesterday, I
was given a note when I got to the C, from Ann, saying to ring K. that afternoon
or Sunday evening. Well, I tried on and
off all afternoon, but couldn’t raise a whisper. So I’ll ring on Sunday. Nice to be doing something already, wouldn't it? I’ll let you know how it turns out.
On Thursday I’d decided to go to
Dickens House, but by the time I’d got to the Centre and away it was about 3.30
– I was very late that day – and by the time I’d walked along C.Rd, another 20
minutes, and got a train going in the direction I was (I finished up getting on
one that was going vaguely that way, but not quite; had to change my train
plans entirely) and even then I had to walk from the Monument station to the
Bank – you do this underground, and seem to go up and down steps, escalators,
along corridors and tubes for ages, and just as you arrive you find the train
just going out! Still it’s fun! Well, I got to Russell Square Station
eventually – you see, the D. House was shutting at 5, and it was then 4.15 – and
of course that particular part of London isn’t
as well sign-posted as the rest (one thing about L, they expect you to get
lost, but they also expect you to have an A
to Z and a tube map!), and I spent several minutes figuring out which way
to go. However, by the time I’d reached
the house, now just another amongst dozens of houses divided up for doctors,
etc., it was 4.35, so I thought I’ll come back tomorrow, and did. [I assume this is 48 Doughty St, but I don’t remember going there at all! Certainly Doughty St is near the Russell Square Station. See photo.]
It was well worth 2/6, but there
is an aura of the celestial about everything: this is the knife-stand that he
used, this is the feather-duster a maid who stayed for three days touched –
it’s not quite that bad, but some of the stuff is a little ridiculous. Other stuff is a little uncanny – the chairs
that he sat in for such and such a portrait, and the portrait is hanging above
it – oooh, it’s a little spooky!
But it really was interesting, particularly
the letters and manuscripts – his writing was much worse than mine! - the books and paintings and the very fact
of the house itself. But some of the stuff, such as the window
that Oliver Twist, for heaven’s sake, is supposed to have crawled through in
some part of his story is just a load of old twaddle! But London in general is
surrounded by this fascination with the places where things were supposed to
have happened – in the books! Mad, I
call it. He certainly made lots of parts
of L. and England famous, for entirely fictional reasons. It is interesting, however, to come down out
of the house and walk into Greys Inn Road – where so many of his stories are
set at certain times. That is weird, because
though so much of it has changed, much of it hasn't and if I could recall some
of the incidents, I think I’d feel a little funny. Perhaps this is what has got to the Londoners
themselves.
Also went to see Madame Tussauds,
but it was something ridiculous like 7/6 to get in, so I didn’t! And so was Regent’s Park Zoo so I just
wandered round the outside. Then
promptly went off and went to this show that I couldn’t get into standing and
paid 8/6 for a seat, where I had to lean forward so far I may as well have
stood! Still it was worth it: Richard
Briers and Ronnie Barker are both in it, and though neither has much to do
really it was quite intriguing to see them in the flesh. And to see Briers in a rather nasty role for
a change: they both get shot during the course of the play, but so do a couple
of others – so! It’s a quite mad play within a play: they’re a couple of
critics watching a play that eventually they become part of; quite mad, but
very entertaining. [This will Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound, I’d guess.]
There was shorter play before it
about a composer and lyricist who with their
leading lady act out a new musical in the hopes that a producer who is
sitting in the audience with us will
put it on. But the play wasn’t terribly good though they
all acted madly.
Mr and Mrs Marshall seem to be a
very nice couple: they've now given me another hot plate, separate-like, which
I nearly wrecked when I turned it on, as something started to burn: turned out
to be a piece of cardboard that was sitting on top and which I’d thought was a
part of it all! I’ll burn the house down
yet: the oven keeps smoking every time I cook in it, though Mrs M is going to
have a look at it next time I cook something as she says it shouldn't!
Lots of luv, Mike XXXXXXX
