1.12.69
Dear Mother, a terrible
thing has happened! How can I ever write to you anymore? I bury my head in
shame, and am confused...
I have left sending your
Christmas present so late that I can’t reach you until after Christmas!! What
can I do? I’ll have to send you another
elephant by airmail ˗ will that be all right? (Would only cost £1456 exactly.)
I went to a film yesterday
called both appropriately and
inappropriately (because it gives rather the wrong impression ˗ people go
expecting something quite different to what it is) My Night at Maud's. Basically it is a love story about (for once)
an actual Catholic ˗ not one of your so-calleds, not a saint who despises all
non-Cs, but a Catholic trying hard to live up to his faith in a very
modernistic society. And though the majority of the audience found the Mass
scenes funny (??), they were forced to appreciate this man as sincere in the
story part of it. The funny (the really funny) thing is that it parallels
recent events of my history ˗ not so much in story as in the fact that I’ve
only found after the H business what this faith lark is all about. (Not all
about it ˗ but I’m starting to get a glimmer of why it is valid, and why we’re
not a pack of fools, we Catholics.) Did I tell you I bought another Michel
Quoist book ˗ Marilyn gave me his first ˗ they’re on living in the modern world
from a Catholic point of view ˗ but I didn’t even properly understand this book,
until after the H bit had blown over. The man in the film said he only
understood a more moral point of his faith after he’d known some woman well!
I’m
finding, too, how worth it is striving, and how possible. About music and me, I
mean ˗ I feel now that it doesn’t matter if I spend a whole year just catching
up ˗ I’ve reached a stage now of seeing the top of one hill, though I’m not yet
there, and don’t see the point of merely going job-hunting in order just to be
in the swim.
P.S. One of the funniest
things about the Compton Cinema is that frequently the customers come back
wondering whether they’ve seen the film or not!
