8.4.69 Easter holiday in Westgate-on-Sea

8.4.69

Dear Mum, I too have been lax - HAPPY EASTER!!! It’s no use sending an Easter egg from this end; they have the silliest and most useless eggs here. I brought some for the Crowls, and all I could get that were reasonable and worthwhile were mere shells with packets of lollies inside. (As it turned out I didn’t give them to them after all ˗ on Sunday morning no eggs appeared on the breakfast table, so rather than embarrass them by bringing mine out, I left it. Reg commented during the meal, anyway, that they were getting too old for eggs! Obviously I’ve reached my second childhood rather prematurely. I brought the eggs back, and they can go in my lolly store.)

We had a rather windy time down at Westgate [Westgate-on-Sea] ˗ or hadn’t I even told you we were

Westgate-on-Sea

going? Reg’s brother-in-law has brought a house down there, and leases it out over the season, so we went down for Easter. It’s a pretty wee place, though they can’t convince me that their beaches are a patch on ours, but on the first two days, tho’ the sun was shining in an unbelievable fashion (and still is), the wind was blowing in off the North Sea, and it was more unpleasant than anything. However, yesterday, the day on which we came home, it stopped and the temperature rose accordingly.

Reg and Marg and I went for a long walk in the morning which was nice anyway, and when I got back to London after a very hot car ride, the weather was lovely and mild. Fabulous. The weekend as a whole was fairly pleasant, but it was interesting to see that when the Crowls got out of their natural surroundings in Woodland Way, the situation between them became a lot clearer and rather curious. Nina, it would almost seem, runs the women’s side of the house ˗ in fact I suspect that she has brought Margaret up! She still sort of suggests what should be done most of the time in connection with anything domestic, and tho’ she asks Mavis what should be done it’s quite obvious she already knows. This makes her sound rather horrible, but she is really rather sweet. And yet, towards Reg she can be very nagging without actually nagging. Good grief this is complicated! Mavis seems even more childlike than I’d ever noticed before ˗ perhaps it’s because of her deafness, and she has withdrawn into herself rather a lot. Reg would be the most informal of the lot if he got the chance, but he’s lived in formal surroundings so long that it’s hard to get him to relax.

I probably come as a complete shock to their system, I think, and cause some internal chaos by my mere presence. They certainly must think I’m getting madder ˗ and perhaps I am, tho’ it harms no one ˗ because I seem to keep them in a perpetual state of hysterics, especially on the long car trips. But I feel and I think for once I’m right to do so, that a holiday is for relaxing on, not for working twice as hard as you would normally. Nina and Mavis were quite determined that the house should be spring-cleaned from top to toe, if only they’d had the time between trips to other places. And they must always have meals punctually ˗ so that if Reg and I are out we must be back on time ˗ and yet if we arrange to meet them at a certain time, they’re likely to come anywhere within a half an hour of the time!?!

No wonder men have invented puzzles they can solve, because it seems that women are just about the most unsolvable puzzles on this earth. Still I suppose they’re worth it! [Obviously forgetting that I’m writing to a female of the species...]

Bleak House, Broadstairs

We did an awful lot of travelling around ˗ to Dover (where the cliffs are grey), Folkestone, which is very built up in the same sort of way that Kensington in London is ˗ very posh, and rich; to Broadstairs: Reg and I alone the second time, after we’d discovered its Dickensian associations ˗ one of the many homes that D lived in is there ˗ now called Bleak House, tho’ it isn’t the one in the book; and the town, a tiny place with terribly narrow streets, has Dickens restaurants and cafes, and ‘D slept here’ places, and at some time in the year a D festival. His study, where he wrote quite a lot of his middle period stuff, overlooked the wild sea ˗ no wonder the sea scenes in Copperfield are so effective ˗ tho’ they too are set in a different place.

As we were coming back to Westgate that night (it should be called Eastgate, incidentally), we saw for a few seconds before the houses blotted it out, the upper semicircle of the setting sun, outlined on the sea’s horizon, blazely red, but not so bright that it couldn’t be watched. We foolishly didn’t stop there, but raced to get past the houses only to find that it had already vanished, within seconds, and the grey mist was obscuring the line between the sea and sky.

We went to Canterbury Cathedral which is overpowering in its beauty. Either the men who built it were angels or else the Almighty took quite a frequent hand in its construction. And it’s a gold mine of history. We didn’t really have enough time to absorb everything, and neither did we have time to casually walk around the town which is also full of historic buildings. I’ll have to go back to these places on my own, or with someone younger perhaps, and really get my teeth into them. We did too much car travelling and not enough walking really, I think, tho’ some of the countryside, still regrettably in a late winter state, is very appealing in its great green, brown and grey sweep.

[handwritten] I want to send you a birthday present ˗ I can afford to, so there! ˗ but heaven knows when you’ll get it!!  Love Mike. 

31.3.69 - Double bill and exhaustion

31.3.69

Dear Mum, how the year is flying ˗ look at the date already! Well, we’ve had a very busy week ˗ a rather killing one in fact. We’ve been up at the Wells most of the week doing our Double Bill and though I haven’t really had that much to do it always seems when we’re on a show that life is three times as hectic as at any other time. And I’ve had to do during the show is to work as a dresser ˗ and then only for at the most six people (sometimes someone else with equally as little work would get in first and take over one or two) ˗ and to help David Gorringe, who was stage managing The Opera Rehearsal to get his curtain up and down at the right moment. (Very proud of that we were ˗ never had a bad curtain the whole time!) [The Opera Rehearsal was conducted by Anthony Negus, one of the repetiteurs.] I also made coffee for one of the singers, and got the occasional bottle of something for others. Now according to rights this shouldn’t have made me tired, but it seemed to.

Of course, as well, since we had all day free, we were more inclined to spend it out somewhere, and this is very tiring, particularly if you’re walking a lot. It’s amazing how much exercise you get in this place, just trying to get somewhere. [Something we found even more tiring when Celia and I went back in 2007 and found ourselves walking continually in spite of buses and the Tube.] You might imagine at first that to go everywhere by tube or train is very easy on the feet, but in actual fact, the miles one must walk through the underground corridors I wouldn’t like to count, and because the escalators go at a rather slow speed, most people walk up and down them ˗ which can be very tiring ˗ the steps are much higher than in normal stairs. Plus the fact that though the trains run up till one or two[in the morning], the tubes and buses stop about 12, and to catch a late train, you have to walk through the city, which may mean a half an hour’s walk. And a quick one too, if you don’t know how long it’s going to take you.

We didn’t get very good write-ups for the show ˗ tho’ The Opera Rehearsal  came off under the critics much better than anyone expected, and funnily enough people said they enjoyed it. Of course they only had to sit through it once. None of the crits I read said much about Gianni Schicchi; in the hands of this cast it couldn’t fail to be at least a reasonable success, but in actual fact I think it came off extremely well. [I seem to recall Alan Opie was Gianni Schicchi.]

It’s a fabulous piece, full of glorious music very well orchestrated, and is a marvellous piece of theatre as well. It’s about a group of relatives who are mourning the death of Buoso Donati, at the opening; they mourn him even more when they find out he’s left all his wealth to the local monastery. The youngest of them calls in Gianni Schicchi (because he’s in love with Schicchi’s daughter, and because he knows that Schicchi has a cunning mind and may be able to alter the will). Though the relatives at first object, he does come and alters the will by impersonating the dead man in front of the lawyer, but then leaves all the best stuff to himself! And kicks all the relatives out of the house ˗ except the young one, who gets the best of both worlds by marrying Schicchi’s daughter and inheriting the wealth that Schicchi now has! ‘Oh my beloved father’ is the big hit tune, but it has lots of marvellously characteristic stuff for the relatives. There’s a great moment late in the piece, when the relations find that they still have nothing, and storm out of the house pillaging what they can as revenge ˗ the orchestra rises up and drowns the screaming and yelling on stage, and the brass take over and drown everything in great blasts of gallumping type music as they all leave, and leave the place in a mess! Then the peace comes again as the young lovers come back on stage and sing the rest of their duet with fabulous pre-Hollywood lushness.

On Friday night after the show, Mike, David Gorringe, Dorothy Iredale (nice wee soul, but rather mixed up, perhaps ˗ she has a great career ahead, though, I think [the usual Crowl elder statesman view of other people ˗ Dorothy gets a few mentions in the next years after this in Opera magazine, but there’s nothing else about her on Google] and a couple of others went back to Hazel’s, and eventually, Dave, Dorothy and I stayed the night ˗ sleeping on a variety of things in the flat ˗ I got a camp stretcher which was only comfortable because I was so tired ˗ Dave slept on cushions on the floor, and Dorothy slept in Hazel’s room on an extra bed.

We’d gone somewhere most nights after the show, and I hadn’t gotten home until about 1.30 each night. On the last night when there were two parties to go to, I finished up going home to bed about eleven. I was dying on my feet, and anyway had to do some copying of parts for Bamford, the next day. I spent all day Sunday doing this actually ˗ and really enjoyed it. It’s the first time I’ve had Anne of Green Gables that goes on here shortly, and the score was written in the same key for every instrument which meant that in several cases I not only had to copy from the score but transpose the notes so that the instruments could play the right sounds. [This show opened on the 16th April and ran for 319 performances.] You see (I’ve possibly told you before) some instruments are known as transposing instruments, and in order to get them to play in the same key as non-transposing instruments you have to write in a different key! But it was a lot of fun actually, and generally speaking Bamford seemed reasonably impressed. He’s never enthusiastic, but always finds something a little wrong, just to keep you in your place, I suppose!

copying to do without Bamford being around around, and found I was getting on very well really. It’s a song for a show called

The dressing, during the show, made a change too; some of the costumers are unbelievably heavy, and the poor kids were like walking ovens. They fasten everything up with hooks and eyes etc ˗ no buttons.

Love Mike. 

25.3.69 Various wanderings

25.3.69

Dear Mum, I’m beginning another letter, because since the time that I’ve felt better, all the silly little things that happen have seemed much more interesting. The rather obscure last sentences on yesterday’s letter were to say that I’d bought myself six scores (remember I was grumbling about how they expected you to buy stuff without money?) with a fiver that they paid me for some trifling work that I did on the Gianni Schicchi scores. Parts, not scores! Anyway it was far more than I felt I should have got but didn’t complain. John had arrived home from shopping on Sat (I’d had to go out: see below) with a score he’d bought in a shop (2nd-hand) around the corner, and he painted vivid pictures of the stuff they had going in the musical line for practically nothing. Well, 'nothing' in the English sense! But slowly and surely I’m beginning to understand that you need to take everything John says with a large number of grains of salts [sic] because when I arrived at the shop there were two scores that were of the least use, and the rest of the stuff was a load of old rubbish! Unless I’m going blind, but I couldn’t see any of the wealth of things he described. It was the same with the flat, before I first looked at it ˗ according to John, it was a luxury flat with all mod cons, and so on. Well, it’s got the occasional odd mod con, but as for luxury..!  Anyway I’ll sift the evidence a little more carefully in future.

I did go into town later on in the day, and went to a bookshop in Cecil Court near the Coliseum, (where I knew they have a lot of music, 2nd hand, and finished buying four more scores there. They were worth it I think. If I’m to get anywhere, I must have some stuff of my own to work on, I think.

Back to Sat. The stage managers had to work from 10 till one, and then from 7 till 10 again, and so had all that time to fill in. Hazel had asked me if I’d like to meet her and David Gorringe at the theatre and go to the pictures in the afternoon. I had to go up to town with some Bamford stuff, so it worked out nicely. We met up with Pete Lyon who was also at the Wells, and he thought he’d like to come too, so we said we’d meet him at Oxford Circus later at 2.30. David and Hazel and I get on very well, as a group it seems ˗ we all understand each other fairly well, and ca’t offend each other unintentionally. It’s almost like it used to be with Kevin and Mike and I at home. Anyway we went and had some lunch, and decided we’d like to go and see Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, [one of my all-time favourite musicals] because it was close, it was convenient as far as time went. (There were other films but David wouldn’t have got back to the Wells in time.) We got to Oxford Circus, and after losing and locating and losing each other again, found Peter, who’d brought two of the wardrobe girls with him! Well, they didn’t want to go and see what we wanted to see and as we would have spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get something to please everybody, we three departed to Marble Arch where the film was showing. On arrival we found it was showing for 10/- and upwards ˗ for a revival! ˗ and so we thought no thanks and decided to spend the afternoon in Hyde Park, just over the road. This was great actually, because it gave us some fresh air, and we really enjoyed it. We were going to go rowing on the Turpentine (as Dave insists on calling it) but it was a little cold for that. (Good heavens, the sun’s shining out here at the mo’!) So we just walked and talked etc.

Then we thought as we still had 3 hours to go we might pop down to Battersea Park ˗ nothing like going completely back to childhood! ˗ but discovered while we were waiting for a bus that it doesn’t open till Easter. So we waffled around Kensington for a bit ˗ the people there are a wonder to [handwritten] behold, clothes-wise. (The typewriter won’t type down here.) And then we thought we’d go to Charing Cross and spend the next hour or so at a newsreel theatre, where [typed] they show such brain-taxing pieces as Tom and Jerry, Mickey Mouse and Batman! But we didn’t have time to see the whole programme when we arrived and so went and had a cup of coffee and then Dave went back to the Wells while Hazel and I went to the NFT to The Thief of Baghdad* ˗ the English version of about 1940, and full of magic carpets and genies and flying horses and heaven knows what. It was very good, and had Sabu as the Thief and John Justin as the hero. Then I went back to Hazel’s and we had something to eat ˗ originally intended to be a snack, but she’s like you, she doesn’t like cooking unless it’s for someone, and so she cooked omelettes and other odds and ends.

On Sunday, after cooking our dinner, I went for a walk, though it was rather too cold, over to Greenwich Park, and wandered around the Observatory (it used to be, but now is a museum; the original house was by Wren) and the park, where there are squirrels and deer.

Last night, I saw that TheBofors Gun, which has Lindsay Campbell [originally from Dunedin] in it for about 3/4 of a minute (!), was on in Putney so I wended my way down there. It’s south-west while Blackheath is south-east. [handwritten] To my mind, Lindsay was Lindsay! He seems mainly cast over here as a typical English soldier type!!

I keep meaning to tell you about another Catholic Church I found near Leicester Square. It’s run by French priests (tho’ Mass is said in English) and I’ve been able to pop in twice around six and go to Communion. It seems fairly modern inside tho’ outside it doesn’t. A bit like the Moran Chapel on a larger scale. [A tiny chapel in the Moran Building in the Octagon, Dunedin.]

Love Mike
It's worth reading Roger Ebert's enthusiastic review of this movie, written at a time when the film was already nearly 70 years old. 

24.3.69 Chance meetings and kerfuffle at the flat

24.3.69 [handwritten]

Dear Mum, what a small world it is! Apart from meeting up with Don Rutherford today ˗ I’ll explain about that in a minute ˗ I was sitting in a little restaurant in Charing Cross Rd, reading thru a score of a rather difficult one act opera we’re doing in the middle of next term. A man came and sat opposite me as there wasn’t much room, and as he was about to leave, he asked me if I was reading it for pleasure or if it was being done somewhere. I said, yes, at the Opera Centre, and he says, in the East End?, and I says, yes, and he says, is it as bad up the right way as upside down, and I said it was and showed him ˗ he turned out to be a rep from Covent Garden, and mentioned he was working on Cellini (Benvenuto Cellini, by Berlioz ˗ it’s his anniversary this year). We had a wee chat about difficulties of playing un-pianistic stuff before he left, and he wished me luck with it and said he was glad he wasn’t doing it! But this cafe isn’t close to Covent Garden, and is only one of hundreds in this area ˗ I’m now in the all-night P.O., about five minutes away. I discovered this restaurant the Sunday I was looking for St Pat’s in Soho, and it was about the only place open that Sunday morning.

Don [Rutherford, a singer from Dunedin with whom I worked on a couple of local amateur shows. He was also instrumental in getting me the job with the NZ Opera Company as pianist on their La Boheme piano tour, which he sang in. He moved to Canada, and then spent most of his operatic career in Germany.) is over here to ‘cover’ (a nicer word than ‘understudy’) the role of Hamlet in the

Humphrey Searle

new opera of the same name by Humphrey Searle. Don had done it in Canada and since the guy who has the role is likely to walk out any minute because he doesn’t think he can do it, Don was brought over for seven and a half weeks (with his wife) just to sit round in case. [It wasn’t because the other singer, Victor Braun, couldn’t do it, but because he was having considerable trouble with his voice. And then Donald himself got encephalitis and never performed.] They were rehearsing at the Centre today (they do a lot of Garden rehearsals there) and I met him in the canteen for a few minutes. He hasn’t changed at all ˗ except that he has slightly wispy sideboards currently in fashion here (and apparently in Canada) and he has a touch of a Canadian accent.

Things at the flat have been undergoing rapid changes of late. John, you see, is a notoriously late getter-upper in the morning and consequently is seldom on time for work. Well, both Noel Gibson at the Centre (who is sort of his boss) and June Megennis, who’s the Director’s secretary) and who practically runs the place, had been asking me where John gets to in the mornings and complaining, as I thought, reasonably enough. Well, I was getting a bit brassed off at them constantly going off at me about it and told John so ˗ which caused a rather heated argument! Anyway, I apologised in the end for going on at him about it and a lot of useful matter came out. According to John, he didn’t have to keep strict hours, and a whole lot of other guff, some of it reasonable enough and some of it slanted with John’s rather curious outlook. Next day, he gave in his notice!! saying he was tired of the place and the corrupt way its run ˗ the previous day his car brakes had failed and now he has neither car nor job !!! (But he does have money in the bank at least.) He seems quite happy and is looking for something else to tide him over until he gets in (he hopes) to the Royal College, in September. So!

Today I spent a fiver on buying old Vocal Scores ˗ I’ve got to have them ˗ but it was payment for a job, so it worked out nicely!

Love, Mike.

20.3.69 Some catch up stuff

20.3.69

Dear Mum, there are so many odd fragments of news I thought I’d better write again to you. I’ve sent off the two foreign newspapers to Dale, but heaven knows when she’ll get them. They’ve both got news of the space men in them. [Not sure who Dale is, though it could be a second cousin.]

(As you can see I’ve finally been given one of these new type air letters: but I see that they don’t have on the outside where to cut them open except on one side; I almost invariably make a mess of one of these and cut them everywhere but where they’re supposed to be cut! Think I’ll put a wee note on the outside.) [These ‘new type air letters’ had only about two-thirds as much room to write on, which must have been frustrating for yours truly.] 

I’m finally getting my tax thing away too, but I’m sending it to you if you don’t mind, because I quite honestly am not sure of completing it from such a distance, and I thought perhaps if you were to give it straight to Des, it might not get lost in the rush of the end of the year. Anyway, it’ll take a while yet. [Presumably my tax return for 1968/9. Des was one of my uncles, who worked in the Inland Revenue in Dunedin; this was in the days when you could go into the office, speak to a human being and get them to help you fill out your tax return. In fact, you could go in and ask for your uncle is you so desired.]

I’m sure I’ve got dozens of other things to say, now what are they all? I know: on Tuesday, I’d been informed that I’d got to go to a rehearsal at 5.30 in the evening, and so said to myself that I’d fill the day in on my own. When I finally arrived at the Opera Centre, the rehearsal had been shifted forward into the early afternoon, and I’d missed it entirely and the two pianists from the other show had had to do it. They’d tried to ring me here at the flat, by phoning upstairs, but of course D was out all the time. We can’t be expected to know they’re going to change their minds like this at the last minute all the time. It’s very poor organisation and quite a number of the singers have been complaining about it too.

Anyway, on the same morning I’d rung up George Bamford to see if he had any more stuff for me to check, and he said he still wouldn’t be ready until that night, and so I said all right then I’d call around in the late afternoon. He also said, of course you don’t do copying do you, he said, I could do with help on that more than anything else. Well, like the twit that I am, I said, No, I don’t, because he’s never sounded keen on my doing it before. Anyway, after I’d rung off, I thought to myself, well, perhaps I could force his hand a little, since he was in such an awkward position as far as time went, and go in and say would it be any use if I did do some copying for him. Well, I did go in, and he, without too much apparent second thoughting, said all right, he’d let me have a go. (He offered one other time to give me some pointers on the business, but never did.) So I sat down eventually, and got started, and apart from his scrubbing the very first thing I did ˗ actually it was a bit of a mess, the pen I’d started to use had scratched on the paper and ink dots had gone everywhere! Also I seemed to be picking up dirty marks from the pen all the time. So finally I went off and washed my hands, and started again, with a not too efficient blotter ˗ it was doing most of the mucking-up of things, I discovered ˗ and using the exiled piece of paper to cover up the page until I actually used it [wrote on it] each time, I got on all right. Didn’t do very much in the end ˗ he said he’d prefer that I went a little slower than not (I thought I was going slow!) and even though the place is away from the mainstream of things, there are a lot of people coming and going, and George and his wife talk a lot, always apparently starting a conversation up without informing the other who or what they’re talking about! And Mrs B made me a couple of ham sandwiches and an enormous cup of coffee, and this delayed things a little too.

Anyway that was that and I then went to the OC. Well, I felt a bit put out at not having anything to do, so in the end David Gorringe, and Hazel and I went to the pictures (a local cinema where it’s cheaper, but where the audience seems always to consist of morons ˗ they don’t laugh or do anything.)  We went to Finian’s Rainbow ˗ a Monica-taking picture, if it hasn’t already been to Dunedin. [Presumably meaning my mother should take my aunt Monica to see it. She was the wife of my uncle Des mentioned above.] It is full of marvellous lines, with a lot of very clever jokes on racial problems in the South of America. But it all went over the heads of the people here ˗ they really are thick, you know. [Oh, dear, what a bumptious know-all this guy is!] (The same day I went down to our post office in Blackheath to get our mail delivered to our doorstep instead of the flats upstairs, and the first bit of mail arrived this morning ˗ Upstairs!). Heaven knows what’ll happen when they get decimal coinage. I think most of them will just give up!

Yesterday, I got up early and went in to get seats for the Dance of Death with Olivier. Got three quite decent seats, without having to queue with a very big crowd ˗ a dozen perhaps, and then since I had 3 hours to fill in before going down to East Croydon where the rehearsal are being held just now (the local art school is doing the designing of the show) I went to the cinema in Waterloo Station where they were showing On the Waterfront with Brando. Fabulous. A very moving story, with a priest who was a priest in it, instead of the usual wishy washy characters you get, and Brando is superb.

Last night Mike and a friend of his he found in a pub recently called John from Ohio (he’s here for an indefinite time, and very pleasant) and I went to D of D. It’s a rather rubbishy play though the first act is at least several times better than the second, but it was great to see Olivier in the flesh, and Geraldine McEwan, his co-star, is outstanding.

Lots of love Mike. 

18.3.69 - Finally feeling better

18.3.69

Dear Mum, I’m going to answer your first question on the letter I received this morning by saying ‘I feel on top of the world!’ ˗ in fact I feel so much like my old self that I’m leaping around. I’d forgotten just how energetic and cheery I normally am. Either that or I’m going Mad! ˗ I’m bouncing around like a two-year-old so much and chatting away to myself about the world in general (I’ve done that for years) that suddenly it doesn’t matter that it’s never anything but winter in England. Actually the weather has been improving ˗ it’s been that much milder lately, so I’m finding it quite pleasant. No one else seems to think it’s getting any better, but they’re a pack of moaners, the English, I think, and they’ve got so much to grumble about they naturally put something very important like the weather first! I’m now three times as busy as I’ve been ˗ must stop exaggerating! I’ve still got a touch of the cough that I had, but it seems to be vanishing slowly, and no longer bothers me.

We’re in the middle of our last week, practically, of rehearsals for our end of term double bill. I’ve actually got the day off, until 5.30, when we have a rehearsal, but George Bamford (who kept me busy all day Saturday with parts for a terrible Irish recording that is being made soon) has some more film music up his sleeve, and with a bit of luck, I’ll be able to go in later this morning and get it, and do it before and after the rehearsal.

I spent Sunday transposing two songs down for one of the students (who may pay me!) and then went off to see a film at our local cinema, on the other side of the Heath. It was ‘If...’ which I’d been trying to see in the West End for ages, but which had always been sold out at the price I was willing to pay. As it turned out it was a very disturbing film, but I don’t feel for the reasons the director intended. It’s all about a public school, and especially three of the sixth formers, who finally gun down the parents and teachers on Parents’ Day, with old 2nd World War machine guns and grenades that have been in store under the school! But this wasn’t what was disturbing; quite honestly I found the end rather silly, but it was the way all sorts of perversions and deviations from the norm were casually accepted within the film that annoyed me. Morals had vanished out the window, somewhere, and much of the film was taking up with telling you, in a roundabout way, that they had.

The previous night, I’d had to take the parts back to Bamford (he must owe me about £13 or £14 now), and this meant a trip all the way up to Kings Cross, and rather a waste of time, unless I was going to stay in the town. So I walked along to David Gorringe’s flat in Portland Place, which is only several stone’s throws away (!), on the hope that he might be interested in going out, or even just sitting round talking. I was almost put off by the fact that the front door of the flats was locked, but I could see a light on in the penthouse, and didn’t think his flatmate was back yet from an Opera for All Tour, so I chance it and rang the bell, and was answered by a voice thru the speaker at the door. It’s a most odd feeling talking to a disembodied voice in the street!

Anyway Dave was home and feeling all miserable because he didn’t know what to do with himself, and so after a bite to eat (I felt a bit awful about that, I always seem to be having snacks up there ˗ I’ll buy him lunch one of these days at the Centre) we went to the pictures ˗ even though it was getting very late, we got into a later showing of the most recent Ingmar Bergman film, called Shame, and about apathy ˗ I think! It concerned, mainly, two married people (to each other for once!) who during a war in the late 1970s, had taken up a farm to fill in the time when they couldn’t be musicians, and how in spite of the fact that the most terrible things were going on around them, they concerned themselves with their own troubles purely, and were of course shocked when the war suddenly took them over. The man, till nearly the end, when he was forced by a guerilla mob to shoot a high official of the other side, and did it because he was ashamed of his previous cowardice, and that it had turned him against his wife, or vice versa, was a very weak individual who would cry when things got too much for him, and after the shooting, he suddenly changed completely, and his wife who had been dominant up till then, became the weaker and was forced to see her husband turn into a brute. This makes it sound rather curious, but it was a fascinating film. And yet I was trouble rather less by it than by If... And it should have been the other way round.

Last Friday, John Kentish asked me if I could go down to Eltham (two train stops below Blackheath) and play for a rehearsal that night, and on the Monday. Well, I couldn’t do the Friday, but I did do last night, and it turned out they wanted a conductor, not a pianist! (And they pay over £4 for it!) So with some misgiving, I took them thru parts of Traviata, which fortunately I know reasonably well, and really enjoyed it. It was quite like being back with the old Carmen chorus at home, and just the same as far as the atmosphere went. [I presume I mean that I’d been chorus master for a local production of Carmen in Dunedin, but I don’t remember doing this at all.] Only this time I had principals as well: an Aussie leading lady, and an NZ bass (the place is running with them ˗ Sadlers Wells has little else!)  There were even the same types of people there: the woman who didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing, and the men shy of singing, but very hard working. I came home on a cloud! And once I got started they even took my cheek the same as the Dunedin crowd, and took it well, for English [people]! (Sorry to harp on these people, but Londoners can be lacking in a sense of humour ˗ you’re never quite sure if you’re on safe ground!)

 

Tomorrow I’ve got to get up rather earlier than I have the last few days, and go and get tickets for !! Fabulous. [I presume this was the stage production, but since that began in 1967, I may have been talking about the film version from 1969.] I stayed the night at Dave’s on Sat, and then spent some time getting lost in Soho looking for the Catholic Church in there that Abigail and I had gone to on Ash Wed. Soho is easy to go straight thru, but difficult to track anything down in. I found it though and won’t lose it again! I was coming from the opposite direction this time, which was why it was so difficult. Actually I had been trying to find another street when I ran across it! Lots of love, Mike. 

Dance of Death ˗ with Olivier