Dated 30.1.69 but more likely 30.12.69 - handwritten over
two aerogrammes.
Hullo, hullo, you won’t
get this letter for another year, but never mind, any news that’s in it won’t
be quite that old. I hope you had a fabulously happy Christmas, surrounded by
lots of cheery relations ˗ that makes you sound a bit matriarchal, but I don’t
quite mean it that way! I hope the post-Christmas period didn’t quite get you
the way it got me ˗ I enjoyed myself thoroughly up until about 10.00 on
Christmas night, and then a great feeling of depression crept over me
(especially when I found I had to make a great Tube detour in order to get home
from Mike’s) and has stayed with me, on and off, since then. I’m beginning to
feel that I must be getting to be a neurotic or summat; I keep swinging from fits
of bustling energy and effervescence to fits of torpor and turpitude (that is
if there are two such words!). There are
a great variety of reasons ˗ each counterbalanced by pointing to the fact that
I oughtn’t to be depressed!
David’s been away for a fortnight
so my usual ‘sounding-board’ is out ˗ but Cathy has been more friendly of late
˗ but Ian has been miserable, and plays the same Joan Baez record till the
early hours while he tries to finish not the best painting he’s ever done ˗ and
I revised a song the other day and thought it was now much more acceptable and
it only seems just as wrong in a different way (oh, the problems of artists!!!)
and they’ve brought in a new rule at work that means we have to fight and argue
with half the people that go in and yet I’m getting on fabulously well with my
co-workers, the boss Trevor, and Mike, his assistant from Jersey (he’s only
about 25) ˗ but they are both leaving in a month ˗ and Margaret, one of the
other cashiers ˗ the most delightfully crazy person I’ve ever met ˗ we have each other in hysterics within minutes, much to
the bemusement of the customers ˗ and one of the ‘perks’ of the place is the
ability to get in free at any West End Cinema; and I’ve felt homesick for NZ
lately and yet find Londoners the most fascinating bunch of individuals I’ve
ever come across ˗ in spite of the fact that 60% of them are very thick, and
seem to have no initiative (and are the biggest pack of ‘fiddlers’, though on
the most petty scale) ˗ the immense variety inherent in 12,000,000 people has
to be seen to be believed. [My apologies
to Londoners: this is the typically opinionated viewpoint from someone who
likes to generalise!]
Mike and I went to
Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve ˗ at the Brompton Oratory ˗ with a Mozart Mass
performed (I couldn’t see the altar but we were right beside the singers and
orchestra!) and the crowd of South West London trendy types and ‘fashionable’
Catholics (and nons) [non-Catholics,
presumably] was out of this world. I then walked home afterwards ˗ London
isn’t sufficiently go-ahead in its ideas to have transport after 12.30 [this from someone who’d grown up in a city
where such late night transport still doesn’t exist] ˗ and because everyone
else was picking off the taxis as I hailed them ˗ well, would you believe...? ˗
I walked about four miles and was within two minutes of home (by taxi) when I finally got one. And my
feet were wet through! But Mike and I had spent the evening talking more than usual
but about all we got out of it is the fact that we don’t either of us seem to
be getting anywhere or
[second aerogramme]
have any particular viewpoint in view. Reg was saying to me
that it’s great, he thinks, that people don’t have to settle into a job when
they’re young as his generation did, but there is the other side of the coin, in that, because it’s so easy to get
work, one tends not to bother to settle into anything, and to waffle around. Life always seems to be too short, at twenty-four!!
Again, I’d like to see a
lot of things, in Europe, etc, but I’d also quite happily be married ˗ and unless
I find a very accommodating wife, the combination of the two would be
difficult. I always seem to be harping on this marriage thing, don’t I, but it
seems to be very much on my mind of late. But of course, as you no doubt
understand, it’s a hangover from the H. business ˗ one doesn’t value a thing
until one loses it. I don’t suppose I need explain this much, to you ˗ that’s
another fault of youth ˗ we can’t get it into our thick heads that other people
have the same sort of feelings and experiences! So the end result of this long
misery, is that I’m just a mixed-up kid!!
And there’s this usual
fluctuation about the music angle. Whether it’s worthwhile carrying on with it
or whether I’d be better to go off as a hobo for the next few years, and settle
down to a nice quiet (ugh! I’m sorry) office job! I’m afraid I’ve got the troublesome
spirit in me that seems to have caused Dad all his bother ˗ an unhealthy mixture
of adventure and security ingrained in my bones. Not only unhealthy, but fairly
irreconcilable. You’ve got it, too, haven’t you ˗ thought the security side of
it seems to have got the upper hand ˗ the only present sign of the other is
your inclination to manage to live on a much smaller bank account than you
ought to have at your age ˗ and to give away any little excess you may have to
your next-to-useless son.
I sometimes think it’s
better to have no brains at all (I mean
me, not you!!) ˗ then you have considerably less worries because all your
interest in life is pared down to basic essentials. Want a set of brains? ˗
they don’t seem to be much good to me ˗ what’s the use of a feverish quest for
knowledge? You only find a whole new vista of unanswered questions before you
and the effort of taking stands upon certain points of view is incredibly wearying.
No wonder ‘Humanists’ think Catholics are wrong ˗ to them the Catholic way of living
seems to go counter to every type of desire there is, and there’s nothing like
a Humanist for giving into the present desire. What the consequence is, is no
doubt unimportant...
I had a lovely Christmas
day ˗ apart from the fact that Mike gave me Verse
and Worse for a present!! (he gave me a book I already had for my birthday
too!) ˗ but half a dozen of us went to Mike’s flat, and it was warm and convivial
and jovial and quite Dickensian and delightful. And yet of the present too. One of the girls had her
two year old son there ˗ the most affectionate child I’ve ever struck (no, I didn’t!) [strike the child, I presume I mean: weak attempt at humour]. The three
bachelors there, (self included) all became quite fatherly. The boy’s father is
no longer within ken ˗ as far as I could make out ˗ not dead, but no longer
with us! It wasn’t necessarily better than last year’s Christmas, just much
more relaxed: five New Zealanders, and an Aussie ˗ what could you expect?? Love, Mike.
