18.2.70 - a new job, starting immediately.

18.2.70 [two aerogrammes, both handwritten]

Well, well, well, the order of things in this world does change rapidly. In my last letter I said that I’ll think about getting a new job tomorrow, meaning, in the future, but someone pulling the strings has taken me up literally, and the day after that letter, I was informed of what I’d already heard from Rumour’s mouth ˗ that the powers-that-be wanted some changes made. Examples: two in the pay-box all the time, instead of one, ten more hours work for a pound a week more money (!); complete change of rota, so that we’d be working through from afternoons till the end of the show (instead of just evenings) or from the morning till later than we do, and starting earlier. So after saying I’d let him know next day, I gave him a week’s notice then, and started on the great job hunt.

Well, I tell a lie there, because in the post on the day of the news came a notice from the telephone exchange saying that they now had a vacancy for a part-time telephonist, but, since that pays only £8 or so a week (on which I’d die) I inquired about full-time work: anything between thirty-six and forty-three hours a week, at about $16-10-0 gross (goes up when I’m twenty-five) (plus another £2 or so a week when I ‘qualify’). I’ve got to train for, I think, six weeks in the day time, and then will work evenings and nights (overnight sometimes ˗ that’s when you work fewer hours a week). So I’ve got the job ‘subject to all my filled-in forms being sent to Enoch Powell to see if I can be allowed to work for the British’ ˗ or somesuch! I start on Monday (as long as my great-great aunt wasn’t a Chinaman) and they seem to think I’m bright enough to work in their International Exchange ˗ when I come out of school. Heaven knows how dumb some of the people tested are (as dumb as the tester who insisted I try and read a chart without my glasses even though I told her I couldn’t see a thing glassless. There was a guy at home when I went for my driving test who did the same thing: only there I had to look down some long funnel thing; I haven’t found out yet what was at the end of that!) because it was all incredibly easy; the form-filling-in was considerably more difficult. The tester-lady seemed quite surprised that I should know so many British place-names so well, and eyed me with some suspicion, I felt, when I said it was because I’d read English books, and had seen English films.

About the new management ˗ as I said before it’s all drearily staid, but gentle. The fact of the £1 extra pay for ten hours is that apparently Mr Neilsen had been paying us the total rate already (I’d always thought it high for a part-time job) and the extra hours have nothing to do with it: we ought to have been working them anyway. But it doesn’t matter ˗ I am fed up with the place ˗ Margaret is the only one who has any life in her, much ˗ and I’m also fed up with the people in and the general monotony.

So!! I don’t know that I greatly care for the eventuality of working all night but it may be interesting ˗ there will shortly be no time in the twenty-four hours that I haven’t worked! It’s all experience cont...

P.S. Good Grief; don’t buy a David Copperfield: £3.50 [or possibly this was meant to be $3.50] is far too expensive. Hope we’ve sorted all these out now; sorry to have confused you.

[second aerogramme]

And I think it may have the advantage of finally giving me a job which I can actually fall back on! 1970 may yet turn out to be the year at least when I finally set my life in order. It is fitting that it should be done in my (good grief) 25th year, isn’t it?

Have you started your new Rite of the Mass yet? Our Parish Priest said Mass this morning and we had bits left in and things left out and he seemed to know as little about the whole proceedings as anyone. He’s left the Offertory Prayer out a lot lately which means that you have half the congregation waiting for it and half ignoring it altogether. I rather like it all (but as you no doubt know I’m rather prone to change!) though the depleted Confiteor is a bit disquieting just yet, and only saying, ‘Lord, I am not worthy’ once is positively upsetting ˗ I always said it several times more anyway because neither the Good Lord nor I have any illusions about my worthiness!

We have a new guest in the flat (and when he leaves will have Chris, Angela’s sister, back!), called Andrew Tansley ˗ seventeen, and a very pleasant young guy. Recommended to us by Hazel with whom he’d worked. He’s there till he finds a flat, and is working in a new mystery play (with Anth ony Quayle) as a props man. [The play was probably Sleuth.]

I went to see some Ionesco plays done by the Tower (amateur) Theatre on Sunday night. This is the group Ian and Angela and Rod are all associated with, and their standard was surprisingly high. After the plays, on the way back Ian and I got into a discussion which eventually lasted till two in the morning (Ian is out of work, again, just now ˗ oh! these artists) and in which we tried to reconcile his argument that he puts up a barrier to protect his ‘inner’ self from new relationships and mine which was that hiding oneself in oneself is not as much use to one as risking getting to know people better, quicker ˗ even though one may be hurt. There’s always the chance one may be helped. (Sorry about the preponderance of ‘ones’ but I’m not allowed to use ‘you’ once I’ve started, so I’m told!) We did reconcile it all eventually (with help from each of the others as they came and went ˗ to bed), after covering the same ground about fourteen times; because I still put up my own barriers (though I’m getting past them more quickly) and Ian knows that what I said has its own value if he cares to apply it.

I have this crazy urge of late to know everybody ˗ properly, not just superficially the way I often have before. And I think I’m even going to the extent of appearing to pry ˗ I hope not, as I don’t really intend that.

Kingsley came up for lunch on Sunday (dinner, I mean) and seemed all right when he left. Now he had something on his mind, and while he told me a lot that surprised me, and interested me, and showed that he too as matured (and has a Lenin-style beard!!) I couldn’t somehow get past the barrier?!!?

On this Sunday Mike is coming up with one of his innumerable collections of ladies, Mickey, by name, and guess who? Kevin Rowlands! And Mike knows him apparently. So that sorts that out!!

Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you what time I’m starting at the Telephone place. 8.15 am. Love (yawn), Mike.

P.S. Still nothing further from CIB ˗ you can have an unlimited number of tries for the price of one! (I think ˗ certainly more than one; after too many goes I should think they’d advise giving up and doing something else!!)

11.2.70 - new staff at work, bathroom leaks, and Lent

11.2.70  [two aerogrammes]

Dear Mum, me again. I received some more books! Another little parcel, with the Hamlet book I was asking about, Pickwick Papers, Verse and Worse (I told you Mike gave me another copy of that for Christmas, didn’t I?) and the copy of Nicholas Nickleby which I’d forgotten I had. I thought I had another copy of that which was in the same edition as some of the others I had ˗ perhaps that was the one that I borrowed off Flora Edwards. [A singer who’d been involved in the Dunedin Opera Company.] The copy you sent unfortunately is the abridged edition (Whitcombe and Tombs claiming to be able to improve on Dickens), and has so much missing it isn’t true. [W&T was a Dunedin retail and publishing company.] Never mind, perhaps I didn’t even have another copy of that: if that’s the case I’ll get another one one of these years. Sorry to keep muddling you up over these books ˗ just goes to show you how little I knew about what I had or didn’t have.

I finally heard from Kevin Rowlands, by letter, in which he merely tells me that he is working in Promises, Promises (which has been playing in the West End for quite a while) and gives me his address and phone number. Quite honestly since that leaves me to do the contacting again, I don’t know that I can be bothered ˗ probably any more than he can. [See more about this man here.] Well, we’ll see; I may pluck up whatever is required to contact him ˗ though I can’t see the point much, since he has no reason to want to know me, I think, and the same rather applies to me! I try to be outgoing, really I do, and I’m more than I was, but dear, dear, it’s difficult when you have to arrange a meeting where neither party is especially interested. It has the same opening gambit difficulties as Britain has been experiencing with the Common Market!

Hey, I’m glad you’re sending that new James Baxter. I have a tremendous amount of time for him, even though he’s sometimes inclined (or was, perhaps) (especially in his plays) to explain things that ought to be left for the reader or auditor to figure out for himself. But who am I to criticize? He’s certainly one of the greatest poets to come out of NZ (completely without any foreign influences, so to speak) and he’s one of us as well! [Baxter was all of this; later he would become something of a cult figure when he gave up ordinary society and went to live as a kind of prophetic hermit in     the middle of the North Island; young, drifting people gravitated towards him.] Did I tell you bought his latest collection (published by Oxford University Press, no less) recently? Worth every penny.

I’ve something else to say to you. What is it? It’ll come back, perhaps. It’s Ash Wednesday today ˗ gee, it has come round quickly this year. And as usual I’m unprepared for its (now self˗enforced) rigours. Though the older I get the more things there are that I ought to overcome, and obviously this is the time to resolve to overcome them. I don’t know why I’d always assumed that as I grew older I ought to become a better person, because that doesn’t seem to be the case. I think I’m improving in one direction, and I take off the blinkers and see all the other faults I’ve been carefully ignoring, or that have walked up behind me when I was pretending to be holier than thou! Age seems to bring greater awareness, of one’s own self anyway, and that no doubt is a good thing ˗ but good heavens the more I find out about myself the more I see what a difficult job my (so-far much ignored) guardian angel ˗ (definitely Fred, by the way!) - has to cope with. Poor beings ˗ they must be nearly visible with all the pity that they must needs show for us humans! (Angels, I mean ˗ this is all a bit mixed up.) Despair however is as much a sin as any of the seven deadlies, and with Fred’s firm arm holding onto me we may get there yet.

No more news from the CIB yet: I calculated it would take until at least the beginning of next week anyway before I’d hear anything, so in the meantime I’m remaining clam (no! calm!)

We’re in the middle of depression at work ˗ with the two managers having left, things have got so unlively, it isn’t true, and when Margaret comes in it’s like the circus arriving in the middle of an out-of-the-way town. She performs to me and I return the compliment (if you follow the rather messy metaphor) and the lights go on again in that part of London, but it’s amazing what a casual atmosphere reigned in that place before. Everybody has so much time on their hands that they tell you their life stories, apart from the long discussions Margaret and I have on everything and everybody. The doorman we have at the moment is a twenty-two-year-old who is the most sex-obsessed person I have ever met. If all he says is to be believed he has a pretty busy life (!) and while some of it horrifies me and some it even now shocks me, he isn’t really a bad wee guy at heart, and a sympathetic ear (though not generally agreeing one in this case!) doesn’t do any harm, I think. And the night usherette told me her life story the other night (she’s a Catholic, incidentally ˗ Irish as 99% of the London ones seem to be) and dear God, she’s been engaged, or attached, to three different men and they’ve all been killed! She’s about thirtyish, I suppose, but one died in an air crash, another in a car crash, and the third of a very premature heart attack. It’s a wonder she survived herself, somehow. But she came to London some time ago (six years or so) and seems now to be getting over it all. It all happened back home in Ireland. She’s not a bad stick, but a little, just a teeny bit, dreary ˗ and anyway she goes for older men, I think. Am I getting suspicious or something? I should really stop here ˗ but I’ll go onto another sheet.

P.S. The shop is going to give me another pair of shoes!

[second aerogramme]

Still about the people at work, in case I don’t send this with the other. The new assistant manager, a twenty-one-year-old (!) South African (born in Ireland actually, and lived in London for a little of his youth) is quite a nice guy, but he takes life terribly seriously, and as soon as a problem arises, as Margaret says, it shows ˗ all over his innocent face. I suppose I was like that all those terrible four years ago, and I think was probably worse, though I don’t think I’ve ever subscribed to the school of letting everyone know that now-and-at-this-instant I have a problem! Not at least once I got past the embarrassment stage; well, pretended that I had. My problems boil up inside, with my putting them aside for ages before anyone knows they’re there. And to tell someone one of my problems, at least up until recently, was quite a considerable effort. I still in a lot of ways tell myself that I’m quite capable of handling everything, and would sooner muddle around for some time before getting help. Obviously I revolve around my own little axis too much, and eventually would have screwed myself into the ground if I hadn’t realised that people don’t mind helping you!

The new manager, Mr Rogers, is an ex-policeman, I’m told, and smokes a pipe, and has a nearly grown-up family, and is very home-minded ˗ all the things that most of the mangers on the circuit aren’t. This is nothing against him, of course; he’s very sincere, and a true person at heart, but like John, the assistant, he doesn’t really understand the sort of slightly round-the-bend people that Margaret and I are. Don’t gasp, mother, I haven’t become any more crazy than I was at home ˗ but I don’t really think I have a dreary personality, and life apart from its fraughts ought to be quite a happy thing. The saints, after all (my examples, not my fellows!) were happy people: they knew where they were going, they knew that the world could be harmonious if it weren’t for the warped minds that we all have that make us think we know better than God. So, as I say, things at work aren’t as effervescent as they were, which is a pity really, because it makes me see the place in the pitiable light I would have seen it in previously if it hadn’t been for the previous staff. [Breathes.)

We’ve had a lot of fun at the flat over the last weekend: a leak in the bathroom developed overnight, after merely persisting quietly for some time, into a flood, and so we stuck a basin under it. The funny thing was that the water was somehow managing to jump out of the basin and walk across to the other end of the room. We discovered then that we had another leak. So we called in the two little men who fix things on the estate (we’re part of a number of houses all belonging to the same landlords) and they came and fixed up the more humble of the two leaks (at 8.30 in the morning just as we were all getting up to go to work or whatnot) and left its big brother for another drippy day. Fortunately they’ve now fixed that fellow up too (one of them giving himself a great big bump on his forehead in the process, and both of them leaving dirty footprints all over the bath, the plastic curtains done up into a bow, the wall singed where they soldered the pipe, lovely sharp little happy pieces of solder all over the floor, our toilet gear and such in the midst of the mess, and the covering to the Ascot water heater half-on, or perhaps it was half-off!), and we’re now reasonably back to normal again. I cleaned up most of the mess, being the only person in and up at the time, and then Angela did lots of finishing touches, so that it now looks like the bathroom we knew and loved.

I went to my second [piano] lesson on Monday, and if I’d any doubts about Doris as a teacher (did I say Reg seemed to infer I ought to have gone only to the best?) they were pretty firmly dispelled. I think this decision at least has the makings of a success. And there was considerable improvement in my general impression over the one I gave at the first lesson, too. It will take it seems about another year ˗ did I say that? ˗ to get to the stage of LRAM, but since I started things backwards, by going out and working as a musician before I was really ready for such things, it doesn’t matter I guess. [This is a bit of nonsense: I was perfectly capable of doing the music when working; additional training never fails to come in handy, of course.]

But I must get another job: for one thing, it doesn’t pay that much, and for another, it’s just driving me up the wall, though I have a lot of wall to go yet. I don’t want to leave just yet, but I think decision number five is called for soon. But I’ll have to get an interesting job ˗ if I’m to work in the daytime, say. Since this is one of the biggest cities in the world that shouldn’t be toooo hard. That’s for tomorrow, anyway. Today I have another hour and a half to face before I’m allowing myself anything to eat. And there will be gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair, etc. I’ve been on a Bible-reading ‘course’. That is, I read a certain specified section or chapter each night: I’ve kept it up for some months now, too. But dear me, some of the Old Testament is odd!

I can’t give up sweets for Lent ˗ I hardly ever eat them. Love. XXXX

P.S. Remembered what I was going to say in Part I! Kingsley rang the other night and I’ve invited him up for lunch on Sunday ˗ hope he survives! 

18.1.70 - held up in the cinema, Catholicism and Topaz

18.1.70 [handwritten on two aerogrammes]

Dear Mum, the first lot of books you sent me arrived yesterday ˗ thank you very much! I’ve started the first book of The Divine Comedy again ˗ last time I tried I never even got to the poem, but got bogged down in the very interesting but rather lengthy introduction, by Dorothy Sayers (who translated this version of the poem). She is normally not quite so serious as most of this introduction tends to be ˗ the only flashes of humour come at the very beginning and end, with a lot of erudition in between. Never mind ˗ I skipped some of it and finally plunged into the poem, which is great stuff, and very well translated.

We had an incident here the other night (at the Cinema, I mean); had I told you that the assistant manager was beaten up a couple of weeks ago? Not too seriously, though he had a very ugly right eye for a while and it’s still a bit swollen and bloodshot. This latest incident ˗ by no means as serious, thank God ˗ concerned me. A guy (a negro, with a beard and moustache, cut short) came in and asked me if I could change £10 for him. Sez I, yes, of course, and proceeded to count out a £5 and five singles. He seemed to be fiddling about with an elderly pay-packet, and I was sitting easy on my side with the money in my hand when he suddenly made a grab for it. I got a hell of a fright and dropped it on my side of the counter, dropped me book I was reading and was just getting off me stool when he produced a rather tatty knife, and sez under his breath ‘I gotta have £10!’ Well, I don’t know what happened next, but putting my skin’s present ‘one-piece’ design above all else, I’d backed into me corner and pressed the intercom buzzer ˗ the guy skedaddled (literally) and we haven’t seen him since. [I don’t mention the fact that I was actually locked into the booth, with plenty of cage protection between me and the customers.]

By the time Mike the assistant manager (he who was beaten up) arrived I was shaking all over and as white as the top of the box office counter. [I don’t know how I knew this. There wasn’t a mirror in there!] If the poor guy (the knife-man, I mean) had asked me nicely I would have given him £10 - if his reason for needing it was that desperate. Life in the gay happy metropolis. [It’s rather ironic that I should use the word gay here, in its original meaning: both the manager and the assistant manager were gay, as far as I recall.]

I received your letter the day before yesterday refuting my remarks about being a selfish youth with your usual biased mother’s love! It’s just as well I don’t believe you always ˗ otherwise I’d be just about the most impossible being on this earth! Come on, mother, admit it ˗ there must be at least one thing about me that drives you up the wall. If you still won’t admit to it after this I can only say that you really are the greatest example of (personified) charity I know and I’d better model myself on you quickly!! [I should, too.]

Re also your remarks about not getting all intellectual about my faith (that isn’t quite what you said but it suffices) the only thing I can say is that I haven’t (for better or worse) the sort of mind that can sit and say I’ve reached the peak of knowledge that I can amass ˗ my poor old brain is constantly on the move, voraciously gorging itself with gunge, some of it useful, some of it not, some of it worthy of storing away until the right season for it arrives. What I’m sure of is that the more I learn, the better I’ll know (a) what I really am and (b) what I really ought to be. This system, however, at no point excludes a simplicity in faith ˗ if it does, one falls into the Devils’ ever-ready-to-embrace-you arms without delay. It would be a terrifying endeavour (it is bad enough) if it were not for the old standby of prayer, which just as the power of money in the world will buy you out of anything, will get you out of any bedevilment if you’re willing to make

[second aerogramme]

use of it. It’s only when you don’t make use of it that intellect and the Devil, thence, take over. You know, born Catholics (so to call them) are very lucky ˗ I wonder how many would have had the courage to become converts if they’d been born otherwise [not into a Catholic family, that is]. If any other Catholics are like me ˗ then obviously the Good God knew what he was doing when he gave us baptism at birth (or deposited me us in Catholic families); we’d be human wrecks in any other situation. What would I be without Catholicism behind me........(Fill in and send!).....

Seriously though, while I admit to not being a very good Catholic (good in the sense that I don’t live it completely enough) I know I’d be a more than worthless pagan! Even as a Catholic, you know, I have only a very partial faith. I was just thinking the other night ˗ if I had true faith I would be able to do anything by calling on the Good Lord and believing in his ability to achieve what is virtually impossible for me to do. (What a roundabout way of saying simple things I have ˗ my sentences start and finish with practically the same thought expressed in a different way.) Instead of that I say I believe in Him but I’m too much of a coward to say I believe He could do anything just like that (e.g. supposing I was incurably sick or somesuch, to say that he could cure me and actually believe it seem not within my present sphere of belief.) obviously I’m going to have to pull my sox up and believe what I ought and not just go halfway.

Interior of Our Lady's; There is/was an organ
in the balcony on which I played one of
my early compositions once, during a service.

Tut tut. It’s now two days later, and I still haven’t got this effort away. I seem to have got rather bogged down above ˗ and hope you don’t find it all too confusing. I hope some sense, and some of what I’m trying to say comes through. I’ve just been to the Anglican Church along the road tonight for a Christian Unity Service; what with the combination of a fine organist and the Salvation Army Band, the hymn singing at least was excellent. (Though in the last hymn the organist got thoroughly carried away and improvised between the three verses, modulating to such an extent that I was rather surprised when he found his way back to the home key again.) And I finally introduced myself to the Catholic Curate, who at least already knew me by sight ˗ it proved that he was at least as shy as I am ˗ what difficult circumstances under which to attempt conversation. The Parish priest, Fr Mills, seems equally as shy in a rather more bluff way. The other one is a cheery round-faced man with glasses and reminds me a great deal of another priest I’ve known at home. Can’t think who ˗ of course, Fr McGettigan! [Fr McGettigan was still going strong many years later when I met him occasionally in Dunedin. The church in London may have been Our Lady of Good Counsel, although that name doesn’t ring any bells. However, it was in Bouverie Rd, which does ring a bell, and was only around seven minutes walk away.]

Went to see Hitchcock’s latest film today, Topaz ˗ by no means as exciting as most, though proving again and again that H. is one of the screen’s masters. And throughout we have scenes where we are sure something horrible will happen and throughout it doesn’t! A character (a traitor) is given a cognac, which he keeps not drinking while his host who isn’t drinking) keeps insisting that he ought, and when he finally does, nothing happens! In another scene we are sure the same character has a crutch (for his limp) that is really a gun but it turns out to be a crutch and nothing else. When something does happen it is totally unexpected, and not what we even remotely thought could happen. But it’s a long film and not entirely interesting ˗ and has had three different endings. I saw the one they didn’t show in the West End ˗ I think. Love, Mike. [I was right about Topaz: it was one of Hitchcock’s least successful movies, and it did have three different endings, though only two of them were ever shown publicly. The third is now available as an extra on the DVD.]

PS. Ian, who gave up his job as a carpenter before Christmas has come home pleased as punch tonight because he’s got himself a job as a ‘flyman’ on Mame at the Drury Lane Theatre (with Ginger Rogers, no less). This means he can now become a member of NATKE, the stage and cinema union and can get other work in theatres. You can’t get in the union until you get a job, and almost can’t get a job till you’re in the union!

30.12.69 - Morose post-Christmas feelings

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 ˗ though 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. 

1.12.69 - My Night at Maud's, and faith.

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!

7.11.69 - an intruder, a concert, and working in Soho

7.11.69 [handwritten ˗ three letters sent at the same time] 

This letter belongs before this one, dated around the 10th Nov. 

Hullo, hullo, hullo, how are things going with you, then? Hope you’ve settled in quite well back at work etc, and that you’re still feeling okay ˗ and looking after yourself. I wrote to Fred [the cat] a little while back and she assured me she was keeping at least one eye on you, but I know what a lazy wee soul she is. Anyway I received your latest letter listing everyone else’s troubles and none of your own problems, so I can only presume you are okay. Good heavens! I didn’t realise Auntie Rose was still alive ˗ that is presuming it is one of the dwarf group, is it? What made me think she had died I wonder? [By the ‘dwarf group’ I meant the fact that my three great-aunts on my grandfather’s side were all tiny, and got tinier as the years went on.] I hate to think of such an old person having an operation ˗ you always assume that old people aren’t nearly as tough as young ones ˗ and while they don’t look it, they seem to come through some pretty hard knockings-around. [She was actually only 77 at the time, if my records are correct.]

....Last night I got home to find that just a short while before Cathy had

[second handwritten letter]

Arrived home and apparently surprised an intruder. According to her, she was going round the back of the flat to put the bike away, when she saw that ‘Ian’ was standing in his room, with the light on, and her light had been on as well. She didn’t do anything but fiddled around putting the bike to rest. Whoever it was in the house vanished because when she got back inside again (she has to go all the way round the front again) she was alone. The funny thing is how he got out our front door (if he did) because to anyone who doesn’t know it, it plays a trick by first apparently refusing to open more than halfway, and then shutting with a sudden bang when you least expect it. Perhaps he got out the window again ˗ someone had knocked over a little table in Ian’s room, and something else, so he presumably did exist, but it’s all pretty odd. Nothing was missing. We called the police about it, and two friendly young East End-accented boys (no older than any of us) arrived and just sort of took a few notes in case it was tried again. The whole thing was just rather funny really.

On Wednesday David accompanied Alan Opie at the Purcell Room in a ‘solo’ concert. Alan sang a Vaughan Williams cycle (one that I remember rehearsing with Graham Gorton at home), three Wolf Lieder, and then after the interval a Schubert cycle of fourteen songs. [The Vaughan Williams was The House of Life; ; the Wolf, Drei Harfenspieler, and the Schubert, Schwanengesang. Graham Gorton had been one of the cast in the piano tours I did with the NZ Opera Company.] Quite a programme really. The first half was tremendously exciting ˗ it makes a whale of a difference if you know the people involved and have taken notes at a rehearsal (they did one at the flat the other night ˗ with Alan’s fiancee [Kathleen] and me taking notes: means finding out the faults made during rehearsals and endeavouring to find out why they’re made) ˗ and the second half had exciting individual songs, but wasn’t quite so good. I was a bit like a mother hen ˗ though why I should be I don’t really know! ˗ and yet I haven’t enjoyed a concert so much for a good time either. The programme he sang would have taxed a much older and [more] experienced artist, and yet to hear someone comparatively young doing them and occasionally letting himself go completely is a rather fabulous feeling. [Alan was 24 in 1969.] And anyway, both the Schubert and V Williams must have been written when they [the composers] were fairly young, so the feeling is in a way the right one.

Dave’s parents came up, and it was very nice to see them again, and also a lot of familiar faces came to the concert, so it was a very friendly affair. Dave and I arrived home not quite on top of the weather, but awake (just!) at about 1.00 in the morning, and fell into bed.

I went to Die Frau Ohne Schatten again last Monday and it is still terribly exciting.

What a place for all sorts of people London is! At one point today we had in here the male cashier from our sister cinema, the Dilly [also known as the Dilly Cineclub; later it became the Cannon Dilly], and one of the soho ‘locals’. The latter is either in a drunken fury with everyone, or else goes around blessing all, with flowers in his hair, and decorations. He knows all that is to be known about Soho and the people, and for some obscure reason is called ‘Phyllis’! The other guy wears the most modern outrageous clothes, and perfumes! and today had on a white coat with white fur trimmings ˗ about mini-skirt length! Ugh!

I’ll put in some other comments at the beginning of another letter but won't send it yet. Have sent it - see III!

[third handwritten letter]

To continue about the people: have I told you about the buskers around here? (I have a funny feeling that I have): one group comes on a Friday ˗ a flautist (and what a fabulous sound he makes) and his accompanist, a banjo player. The latter is so terrible it’s not true. And he rather spoils the flautist’s music! The other group I see on a Friday morning at Oxford Circus ˗ one plays clarinet, another banjo and another a drummer and they are the swingingest group in London. It’s quite refreshing to come out after a tube ride and hear them echoing up and down Argyll St ˗ the Palladium’s street, incidentally.

Going home on a bus at night can be interesting too: I had two Welshmen sitting behind me one night and one was dead drunk ˗ but all the same insisted on holding a very involved conversation about a crane with his mate. This would have been okay except that he hiccupped every thirty seconds on the dot, and was quite upset in his train of thought each time. The conductress on the bus turned up again the next night going home and said she thought this guy was going to be sick all over me any minute.

About two or three nights later I was reaching my stop on the way home, when the man behind me sneezed and was sick all over ˗ including some of my suit! Poor guy. I didn’t know what to do about him ˗ whether to just leave him there with the conductor or what! There wasn’t much I could do really, short of inviting him to come and clean himself up at home.

Did I tell you about the night there was a fight upstairs on the bus? Yes, I think now that I did (the flute player and his mate were outside just now ˗ they play Elizabethan Serenade when they come to a certain corner of the piece they go in different directions ˗ it’s very funny really. And they also just played Eton Boating Song and at one stage the banjo player went shooting off in a completely different key!

The people that come into the cinema are a pretty varied lot: your lonely old men (and lonely young ones, too), your tired businessman (he does exist), the boys out on the town for the night, your country boys, the bully boys who seem to think it’s a necessary part of their living, the young kids who are just curious perhaps, the ones who just don’t know how to get on with their wives, or their lives, or both. Hazel said once that they’re all people who can’t get on with women in their normal lives, but it seems to me that this is too great a generalization for the variety that comes in. Anyway, it gives me an opportunity to cheer up quite a few of them, which may be something at least. It certainly does me good to see their faces break into a smile when I sometimes hadn’t thought it possible. Many of them are mere kids really ˗ I’m beginning to feel like a father figure! 

12.9.69 - more about the job

12.9.69 [handwritten]

Dear Mum, Well, well, the woman who was supposed to have come to take over from me seems to have changed her mind ˗ whether she’ll change it again or not I don’t know ˗ shouldn’t think so, but you never know. Anyway, at the moment, I’m on the full payroll, so they tell me (‘they’ being the Relief Manager who seems to know as much about it as anyone else), and all seems to be right ˗ except that it’s damned hard work! You’d never believe it; I guess it’s the hours. Anyway, I’m getting used to it and seem to be coping. This week I’m earning two whole days of cash I didn’t expect, so!

I’ve asked about the Edinburgh business and even that seems to be no problem. [I’m not sure if this means them letting me have time off to go to Edinburgh.] We’re still losing money ˗ to a variety of amounts, but until they get an adequate system, they can’t really tell who’s fault it is! I did put one pound in the other night as I had a horrid suspicion that I’d given away too much in change but otherwise they take it out of petty cash. Anyway, they’re making a hell of a lot of money ˗ the new film which started yesterday has been bringing twice as many people and we were fairly busy before!! The odd minute or two of it that I’ve seen don’t seem to be any better than those odd minutes in the previous week! [To go to the toilet, as I recall, staff had to go past the open cinema door, so glimpsing the movies wasn't uncommon.]

Berwick St Market, today.
Courtesy of Positive Dialogues

Moneywise I seem to be okay ˗ I actually put some cash in the bank this week. Yesterday I bought myself two ties ˗ equally colourful and bright as the 30/- one, but 27/6 cheaper, each! I got them in the Berwick St market, just round the corner from the cinema ˗ like a miniature Petticoat Lane. I’d better go back to work ˗ it’s my half hour break, and I’m writing this in a little Sandwich Bar down the road.

Later. Actually I seemed still to have some break left so I had an apple and talked to one of the ticket collectors. Remember how I said I had got some food off the ticket collectors ˗ apparently as gifts ˗ well, they asked me for it [the money, presumably], in each case, even though when I’d previously offered they’d refused!! Odd, isn’t it?

We all seem to be getting on well at the flat ˗ now that David has got all his stuff in, it’s really looking lived in. Not that any place I go to doesn’t; put Crowl in a room five minutes and he’ll seem to be at home!

Dave, the Trinidaddy doorman, here, has nothing to do but stand all night ˗ and he sez he doesn’t get bored, but spends the time sorting out his problems, and just looking at the passersby. Admittedly it is interesting, though I still like to have something to do. The variety of customers we get in here is quite surprising ˗ they’re not in the least all of a ‘type’. You’ll never be able to read this, I think! Love, Mike

P.S. Tonight, we tried a new system and tonight we balanced!

6.9.69 - more on the new job

6.9.69 [handwritten]

Dear Mum, just got your letter about Kevin’s visit. I had asked him if he’d go and see you ˗ but I was surprised that (a) he did so soon and (b) that he stayed so long. Did you think he’d changed much? I suppose the mere fact of the above shows that he has ˗ and  didn’t he dislike cats before?? I wonder if Fred actually remembered him ˗ they’ve certainly met before.

Though it’s only the late afternoon I’m working and have been since about 11.45 at the Cinema. One of the day cashiers is sick so I got an emergency call this morning ˗ just after I’d bought myself some steak for the next two days. I left a letter for David who arrives today to help himself to it if he wants but I doubt if he will.

We never all seem to be together in that flat ˗ today will be one of the few occasions so far, but tomorrow Angela goes on holiday back to her home so we’ll be back to four again ˗ or five rather; we’ve had a permanent guest ever since I’ve been back from Hastings. He does contribute to the upkeep so I suppose that’s something.

The job is going along and though it’s six hours a night, the time does pass fairly quickly. I’ve got to work through till 10.00 tonight ˗ time and a half for the day part of it ˗ but it’s still a hell of a long time. And possibly tomorrow as well.

The mixture of people there continues to fascinate me ˗ the doorman is from Trinidad, a European, but he has the native accent. There’s an Irish night ticket lady, and another cashier is Irish (with Maltese and Italian parents), another doorman grew up in NZ! What a place! I still don’t know whether I have a job after the 15th, but I’m not greatly concerning myself.

Last night (a night off) we got a call at the flat from Hazel to say that a man had approached her outsider her present flat, and had so upset her that she’d told him her flat number and all! She wanted some company in case he did arrive and caused any more trouble so Ian and I went over. The man never showed up ˗ he’d said he was a film actor! ˗ but Hazel gave us a meal to compensate for calling us over for nothing! She’s quite mad, but marvellously sweet. We had a very enjoyable and relaxing evening really, so it was rather pleasant after all.

Must go back to work ˗ and leave this Italian restaurant, where someone in the kitchen seems to have a bad case of grumps. There’s a great palaver going on out back.

Later. What nice people they are that work here! On Saturday I think it was one of the ticket collector girls went out and bought me a sandwich and ‘forgot’ to tell me how much it was, and tonight someone has gone into the baker’s behind the theatre and bought me a Danish pastry ˗ and won’t take anything ˗ what fatal fascination have I that people want to buy me food all the time!!

Have I told you I bought a (cheap) camera yesterday. Might at long last get some pictures of the sort of places I inhabit.  Love, Mike

4.9.69 - my new and not very salubrious career

4.9.69 (midnight)

Billy Graham preaching outside
the Compton in the early 60s

Dear Mum, I’d better write now, because I haven’t really the time during the day at the moment. I’m trying to organise myself fairly thoroughly, and so far things are going quite smoothly. I’m just home from work, of course; six hours of selling tickets to men who obviously haven’t much else to do with their time. This club as I think I told you shows pretty grotty films: what they call X films here (which is why the cinema is licensed as a club, and must function according to police regulations) and which they wouldn’t bother showing at home. [In NZ, I assume I meant.] Quite why men want to come and see them I don’t know ˗ for the same reasons that striptease clubs make a nice profit I guess. [As far as I knew at this time, pornography, in NZ, was barely visible, though it presumably existed in some form.] Old Compton St, where I work (it’s just off Wardour St, which is very famous as the English film industry’s street, as you no doubt know) has two or three strip clubs in it ˗ one practically opposite the cinema, and a variety of restaurants of greatly differing quality, a Cinerama theatre, several clothes stores ˗ the ones who can’t make Carnaby St, which is also not far from there ˗ and the usual number of pubs. (The Soho average is slightly higher than elsewhere in London, about three a street I should think!)

The Compton [Cinema] is nearly all underground; I’m in the only bit that isn’t, and I shouldn’t think it holds more than 200, if that. The people who come have to join first, at 15/- a head! ˗ then they pay 12/6 on top of that. No wonder they make money there. The film runs continuously from ten in the morning till (this week anyway) 11.47 at night. There are shorts, but the point is that the place never closes once it’s open. Only men can become members (!) but since they can take a ‘guest’ in, some of them take their wives or girlfriends in. God alone knows what they think of it! We had one man last night who wanted to take both his wife and his dog in. Tonight I had a Czech who spoke no English at all, and as little German as I do, so though he wasn’t keen on the idea, I finally let him in for £1-7-6 (he wanted to go in for 12/6, like some of the English people who can read the signs do), but it was only after innumerable gesticulations on my part that we got anywhere.

Compton Cinema in the late 60s

Lots of the men come in without their cards, and at present the filing system is in a complete state of chaos, so that it’s well nigh impossible to find anything. There is an old set of names with thin strips of cardboard stuck in metal plates that are detachable from their main stand and which should be on the wall but isn’t. The strips fall out whenever you try to find anything, and anyway they aren’t in order except that they’re under A or B or such. There’s a new card filing system which is in perfect order, but lots of the cards haven’t yet been filed, and there’s a list being typed (again not strictly alphabetically) into a book. This will soon be stopped, I think. Or at worst you can look in the daily records book where each name is entered against its membership number. This may only take a good half-hour, depending on whether the guy can remember when he came in before or not!

What amuses me about the place is that nobody [who works there], as far as I can make out, and I think I’ve met most of the staff at one time or another who work there, ever watches the films that are shown! Even the management. Mr Neilson, who as I said is not much than older than me, is going on holiday tomorrow, and Mike ? is taking over. He’s from Jersey, and is filling in time till he can get the right sort of union card to be able to work in the floor management side of TV. He’s done it before, but apparently can’t do it just now. Anyway, I may yet get another job out of it all. There’s a new cinema being opened in Tottenham Court Rd, on the same sort of system, so I may be lucky enough to get the same sort of job. It would suit me fine, because I’m starting to make some headway with what I’m doing in the daytime.

Remember how my foot was damaged? Well, it’s now getting to the repaired stage, and somewhere along the line, I’ve now been bitten (I think) on the other foot, and it all swelled up! I’ve put the Englishman’s favourite antiseptic on it (TCP) and I haven’t yet looked at it since I’ve been home.

The weather today suddenly went mad and shot back up to the 70s, just as we were all putting our winter wooly vests back on. Crazy. Monday was August Bank Holiday, though as usual it fell in September (!), and Hazel and Ian (who is an old friend of Hazel’s) and I went out in Ian’s car for the day. We didn’t go far, only to Epping Forest, where we walked (and picnicked, rather unsatisfactorily on biscuits and apples), and then when we finally found the car again, we went to Hampstead Heath, and had a look at the fair. Actually there were three fairs, but all of them were pretty dull. We went to see Some Like It Hot in Hampstead, at 4.00, [this would have been the second time I’d seen it] and then when we found all the restaurants we wanted to go to were closed we went to a singularly ‘caff’ type place in Soho, and then went to a pub next door to Hazel’s present abode (she’s rented out her own flat, as she leaves London for some time soon), then went to Hazel’s present abode and listened to The Rite of Spring! Very curious day, but also very relaxing. Ian and I got to know each other considerably better too. [Hazel was due to go off as stage manager in another part of the country.]

[Handwritten on the back] Next day. Other foot this morning seems to be calming down somewhat, and is back to its normal size. Call me YS029399C!! from now on. That’s the National Insurance. I wrote to the Post Office about Postmen’s work, and you should see the rigamarole of forms they sent back to fill in ! I was only asking ˗ you’d think they thought I was already joining!

P.S. And I’d have to take a test!! [I’d worked as a Postman in Dunedin, for a couple of months.]