Sydney
15.9.67 (Noon)
Pencil
economy! Not really – just haven’t a pen. Hullo! Have recovered my usual
buoyant sense of humour (probably as a result of enjoying Fiddler so much, and because it’s so warm, and because I’m going
quite well with my German – if I can keep it up.)
It’s a
funny sort of day. Sort of diffused – if you know what I mean – there’s a haze
over the city, but the sun is filtering through – and my left arm is feeling,
and looking, rather burnt. I’m sitting in one of about a dozen parks (small) in
KC, just down the road from the Hotel. These parks (even the very smallest)
seem to have fountains and trees and shrubs, and there are any number of seats
– in fact there are seats all over the city, and parks!
[back in ink again]
LATER
Got a letter from me mother! Hurray!
I laughed at it all the way up in the lift (otherwise empty) and along the
corridor and into my room. Looks like I’d better take my umbrella into town
with me tonight – it’s been raining most of the afternoon – should be okay –
the repair job seems to be all right.
MICHAEL
CROWL – MUSICAL DIRECTOR, No, no. MUSICAL DIRECTOR ----! That’s totally funny –
I’d probably be awfully inept at it. [Not
sure what the reference here is; probably my mother trying to cheer me up.
2018: anyway, I’d done musical directing in various ways before I’d gone to Oz,
so I’m not quite sure why I found it so funny.]
I’m
going to ring the Trust in about half an hour and see if I can get some
satisfaction. Hope that today I’ll
know what the future will be. I haven’t gone anywhere much for the last couple
of days; it’s been sort of frustrating to have to sit round and wait like this.
Can’t even book me flight home. And I’ll have to go easy on the old pocketbook,
too, if I’ve got to stay on a bit longer. Anyway, I’m determined to come home
with something left over. I would have had a lot more if the Hotel bill had
been what I expected. (Don’t be surprised if every now and then you find nouns
with capital letters in the middle of
a sentence. In German all nouns have
capitals and the ones that I know in German I’m inclined to put down with a
capital! Silly, isn’t it?)
I’ve
spent most of this arvo in the little library round the road reading Tobias and the Angel, a comedy on the
Bible story, by James Bridie. The Aussies don’t seem to be able to put books in
order. It’s awfully hard trying to find anything in the 2 libraries I’ve so
far been in. The Main one in town has only a vague order. Nothing is
alphabetical as far as I can see, so how they ever find anything! [Still griping about libraries 25 years
later.]
LATER
I’m really beginning to think that I need a business manager or something – I,
myself, must be handling things wrongly – or something! Just rang the Trust,
again, and now we’ve got to wait till Mr Krug gets himself moving re the Ballet
Co. He’s their conductor. (P. Schwartz apparently stayed in Sth America or
somewhere obscure – how odd!) [Peter
Schwartz was a chain-smoking Austrian conductor who’d made his home in NZ; he
was involved in the Summer Schools in Dunedin where I met him, where he was
very encouraging in terms of my accompanying. I hadn’t heard of him since for
years until I became involved in the brass band movement, and there he was
conducting a band as one of the many strings to his bow. 2018: I wonder if I
intended the wordplay/pun?] So they were going to wait till Tuesday, but I
said that my time was limited (so it is; I’m fed up with waiting around for
them) and so I’ve got to ring them on
Monday at lunchtime. Heavens, they do muck around, don’t they! They must surely
know whether they’ve got room for an
extra pianist, or not – their excuse, according to the (not so) charming Miss
Swan is that they’ve got people dotted all over the country just now.
Marvellous!
I don’t
know what to do about Pikler, now. Doubt if he can do much at this stage, and
anyway, the place he’s mainly concerned with is the Conservatorium, and I’ve
been there! And that other fellow that Cecil introduced me to, John Hammond,
reckoned if he were in my shoes he’d get a job, any job, just to be on the
spot. [A sound piece of advice which I
obviously wasn’t hearing.] I’m inclined to think I’ll get as much musical
experience back home – (where I’m obviously appreciated – heh, heh) and where I
won’t have to pa out exorbitant amounts for lodgings. Look out, I’m going to
scream – [printed very large:]
AAAAGH!
That
feels a lot better.
 |
| Courtesy Creative Commons |
Better
go, got all me packing to do tonite – go to Anne’s tomorrow. Mary Williams, who
was also in Fledermaus, a cellist
(whose flat Claude and I went to for tea, remember?) is coming over for the
afternoon, on Sunday, so we can have quite a chat. [Claude was a genuine Frenchman [2018 I’m not sure why I wrote
‘genuine’], a clarinettist. There was some relationship between him and Mary
but I’ve no idea how serious it was. I seem to recall Claude mooning around
after a fairly disinterested Mary. My one other great memory of Claude, who was
an excellent clarinettist, is that he couldn’t get a single note out of a
clarinet I owned, and which I took on tour with me round NZ, and could actually
play!] My poor old left arm’s burnt nearly through, while the right is only
red.
Oh,
well, see ya, love Mike.
