21.9.67 - An evening with the Purdys

Sydney 21.9.67

Dear Mother,

How’s things with you? Got a letter from you yesterday, which was very nice indeed. By the way, I did get the things Jack sent me – sorry that I’ve not confirmed it before this, but (A) I assumed that you would guess I had since I didn’t panic about them, and (B) I just kept forgetting to tell you. [2018: this is curious. Back on the 11th, I'd told her that whatever this Jack sent – whoever he was – had arrived with unexpected colouring on it.]

Still no news from my source so I’ll very likely be coming home soon, I should think.

Went to Cecil’s last night for dinner – walked all the way (about half an hour from here) mainly because I missed the bus. I intended to get there for the first part of the trip. Anne [Cecil’s wife] is very nice – reminds me of Wendy Hiller (as she is now) for some reason – and we had a lovely dinner. Their lounge is one of the most comfortable-looking rooms I’ve ever seen. You go into it and look and immediately relax. Of course it’s full of books (including the compete set of Punch from the month it began till well into this century), lots of records, trophies, pictures etc; and it almost seems crowded out with furniture. You have to keep going round things to get anywhere. The house is a bit of a maze; I couldn’t see much of the rest because it was fairly dark inside, but rooms and passages seem to go off in all directions. Didn’t have tea till about 7.15 or so and the rest of the evening passed very quickly listening to Anna Russell (doing take-offs of G&S operas and the Ring Cycle by Wagner) and part of a record by Flanders and Swann. So, a very quiet and pleasant evening was had by all. They gave me a lift home afterwards which was also very nice!

I’ve finally finished David Copperfield – this morning – reading the last 90 pages or so in one go. Gee, it’s a fabulous book – terribly sad, of course. It’s always horrible the way characters that you’ve grown to like a lot are killed off in Dickens books. But it’s the way of the world, I suppose. And you seem to feel it a bit of a loss knowing that these people are going to stop cropping up in your life. You get very attached to them.

Well, this isn’t much of a letter, I’m afraid. I’m not doing anything at the moment, just sitting around waiting – I’d really like either to feel that on Saturday or some such I was either starting something here, or definitely going home. But nothing I do seems to hurry these people up at all. So ------ never mind,

See ya soon, I think, Love, Mike.

Telegram dated 23.9.67 from 8 Lane Cove, NSW:

Home Tuesday, Mike.  [2018: This address seems to be relatively close to where I was staying with the Newburys.]

7.9.67 I arrive in Sydney

The first of a number of letters dating from when I went to Sydney, Australia, in 1967, to spy out the lay of the land regarding possibility of repetiteur work. Handwritten letters. Most of the letters have no date on them, but back in 1992 I appear to have got them sorted. I typed them up that year, printed them out, and then the original on-computer versions were lost. This year, 2018, I've typed them up again so that I have more than just a paper record. 

The comments in square brackets were added at the time the letters were first typed up, and a few more have been added in the 2018 update.

I’ve left some of the quirky spellings, most of which will have been intentional rather than accidental. 

The young fellow writing the letters - 22 years old at the time - was somewhat naive, a good Catholic, and sociable. And close to his mother, having not had a father in sight since he was three.

Manhattan Motel, Greenknowe Ave, Potts Pt, Sydney. Postmarked 7.9.67

Dear old

   Much-maligned

     Mum!

Please accept all apologies for general lousy treatment by yours truly of you over last couple of days. As you said once I got on the plane I was okay and thoroughly enjoyed the trip over. Chris Beckett and I had a couple of chats because we both had three seats each (the plane being only about half-full – it must hold up to 200!). [The identity of Chris Beckett is now not known at all – possibly he was someone I’d met at a Summer Music School.]

Tea (or Dinner) was the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. First a man (one of about four cabin stewards) appeared with a couple of very odd looking trays – he was holding them so high I couldn’t see what was on top, and I thought (the meal was four course, or supposed to be) that he was just bringing a few starting implements. However, the entire four courses were on this one tray! (About 18” by 24”). Soup was in one corner, sitting bubbling, then 2 little pottles (one with milk and the other with mint jelly for the lamb), then a tiny pair of pepper and salts, a packet containing two different biscuits and one of those quarters of Chesdale, a cup for the coffee (which arrived a little later), a packet containing knives, forks, etc, an oblong dish (divided down the middle) (about 6” long!) with a small piece of lamb in one side and two baby potatoes and a lot of peas in the other. There was also a small bread roll, and some butter. A real mini-meal. I’ve never got through a four course meal in less time!! [Things haven’t changed – they just don’t advertise it as a four-course meal anymore.] [Note in 2018: the very idea of a four-course meal is almost as unlikely as getting the sort of service that used to be provided on flying boats.]

Chris is going to Paris (via London and Vienna) to study piano!! Just like that – in the middle of a school year! (Upper sixth.)

The Manhattan is very enormous, compared to my usual sort of hotel (and is in the middle of dozens Kings Cross, naturally.] I am in a room with two beds, and a bathroom!! (Shower, bath, toilet.) And since no one else has arrived, I guess it’s all my own. [I have no idea why I thought I’d be sharing with some stranger, though it’s probable that had happened in NZ in a less expensive hotel.] It’s not luxurious, but it will do me fine. [Not quite sure what I expected for my money.] I have a fourth floor view of a lot of lights, and other buildings, and some ferry floating past. (And no fire escape either.) [Never satisfied. I probably hadn’t realised that the fire escape would be down the corridor, not directly off my room.]

More recent view from Greenknowe Ave window 

of other equally large hotels, just a couple of quite long streets away from the Cross. [

I wandered up and down for ages around the general area trying to get a paper, and finally gave up. Then I went into a bookshop that was open, and when I bought a book that I haven’t seen in NZ (and wanted) the lady gave me her paper when I told her me troubles.

Must mention customs. Of course, the moment the man started asking me questions I went all red and stammery and so he looked through my satchel (with such pornographic literature as David Copperfield) and through my bag (not the hanging one – he gave up before that) (and I’d recovered my self-control by then too!) and found all that carefully hidden contraband: Elastoplast, Enterovioform, underclothes, towel! [2018: Enterovioform is no longer generally available; apparently there were neurological side effects.]

Better go, this place looks quite interesting, after all!!!

XXXXXXX see ya, Mike.

A wee bit later,

Waall!!

(A) I’ve recovered me sense of humour (on the plane!) By the way, hardly saw the sea till practically at Sydney – flew over clouds from our West Coast.

(B)  I’ve fallen head over heels for Sydney!!

I went out before to post the rest of this letter, but couldn’t find anywhere with envelopes (although there’s all sorts of odd shops open) and couldn’t get the stamps I needed (PandPandP. Office on our corner.) [I think this means that there was a post office on the corner which I missed on the way out.] So I decided I’d have a look at the Cross before I went to bed. Well – (as it happens we came thru in the taxi before anyway) it seems to thrive mainly on strip-shows, with barkers outside telling you that the ‘show’s just started’ – and believe it or not a young frizzly blonde lady asked me as I was walking by, ‘Do you want a girl, love?’ (No, I didn’t believe it, either!) – she looked, and sounded quite nice, that was the funny part. I chuckled to myself all the way down the road! Bought meself some fruit (singly, not by the pound, I was informed!) because I’m starving.

See ya, Mike. [Oh, the arrogance of the naïve.]

These letters are indexed here

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! 

7.2.70 - Tiny Alice, books and shoes

7.2.70

Dear Mum, I’ve just received a couple of Tablets and that calendar (three newspapers indeed!) and then later on this morning two parcels of books, the ones that had appeared to vanish for a while. Thanks very much indeed, but can I ask you, is this the last lot of books you’ve sent? Because if it is, there are one or two things I’d thought I’d asked you for and perhaps haven’t. Did I ask for the Beethoven sonatas? They are in three books of the type that the Bach Preludes and Fugues are in, and should have been up on the shelf above the Jam. (!) And there were four books on Shakespeare by Granville Barker; the volume that hasn’t come is on Hamlet alone. Perhaps Marilyn has it ˗ if so don’t be worried, but I would be grateful if you’d have another ...wee...look, please.

The Dickens books too aren’t quite what I expected ˗ dear, dear, this does sound bloomin’ ungrateful of me, doesn’t it? Actually looking at what I have, and recalling what else was at home I’m inclined to think that perhaps you have sent another parcel. In case you haven’t, the other Dickens were Nicholas Nickleby (I’m sure I had a copy, but perhaps I’m mistaken there), Pickwick Papers ˗ definitely on the shelves! Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewitt (you’ve sent one copy of this ˗ there were two ˗ but this one is the old, old one that had been in the house since before I was born, and some darling child at some stage has scribbled all over it and torn out the last few pages!), Great Expectations (it was in that edition that I had some others from: small and red-covered and readable!) The only other one, as I think I’ve said before, that may not be there, because I don’t know if I ever got it back from Marilyn, is David Copperfield. Quite possibly if you have already sent these they’ll have arrived when you get this, or something silly. If you haven’t and have a couple of bob to spare some one of these days, can you forward them? Am I a blasted pest? Let me know please! [I imagine even my mother would have answered the question about being a pest with a definite Yes!]

After telling myself that I wouldn’t buy any more books this week, because I haven’t put anything in the bank for about three weeks or more, and because I keep paying out for necessary things, I went out and bought a much too expensive copy of Tiny Alice, a play by Edward Albee (who wrote Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a play which you must have heard of), which Mike and I had seen on Wednesday night [like the Broadway production, it starred Gielgud and Irene Worth.] How great a play it is I don’t know, but it was so elliptical and so interesting and so difficult-quite-to-understand on one viewing that I decided that a reading was required. David had seen it too, and we spend the little time we see each other these days in figuring it out, and getting ourselves further into its apparently endless depths. It’s all (well, some of it) about losing one’s faith (two of the main characters are Catholics, and I suspect Albee is - or may have been - a Catholic too, because of the fact that so many of the lines have a ring of Catholic liturgy about them), and symbolises to a certain extent a variety of things like the Mass and the Trinity and perhaps Christ even in the character of another man ˗ at least it does to me! Other people apparently have found quite the opposite: that it is more about diabolism than the other. Anyway it’s worth a further look into it. [I was wrong about Albee having been a Catholic; and I’m not surprised that we struggled to understand the play. Even Albee himself seems to have wondered what it was all about at times!]

I’m also at present on the third part of The Divine Comedy (that you sent); what a fabulous story and allegory and all things in one! It makes one feel happy to be a Catholic, and that one is part of such a great scheme of Love, so to speak.

The Story of the Shoe. Remember those shoes I bought last week? Well, the first day I wore them they seemed fine until towards evening when my left foot started to ache and hasn’t stopped since. Right where the laces are tied. I couldn’t wear the left shoe, and finally took it back to try and get it stretched, thinking that would help. Well, after two days of this (which quite honestly didn’t really help the look of the shoe, and anyway, my foot seems to have got annoyed and just refuses to be comfortable in any shoe, old or new) I took it home again, and this morning quite by chance had a look at the size of it, because it said a 7 and I thought I’d bought a 7½. The right shoe is a 7½! I took them back with considerable speed and annoyance, and at first they weren’t too happy about doing anything, and haven’t yet; they’re got to wait for the Guv’nor (English Guv’nors are apparently never on the premises). So I’m to ring them on Monday. But I’m not backing down on it, which I think they thought I would, because the blessed things cost me over five pounds and I don’t feel like damaging me foot for life for their sake!

I received a reply from the CIB, with a photo and some details of a young lady, and now apparently we have to wait and see whether she will reply favourably to my ‘details!’ If it wasn’t so serious it would be funny, and if it wasn’t so funny it might be serious! We’ll survive, I guess, and at present I’m looking on it as something of an adventure ˗ like all adventures rather fraught with terrors, and overcomable in the end. Wish me luck and lend us a few spare prayers, and we’ll get by.  Love, Mike

4.12.69 - sending books from New Zealand

4.12.69 [handwritten]

Dear Mum, thanks for the Peanuts. [The cartoon, I think, rather than nuts.] Thanks also for the list ˗ see below. 

...About things musical; as I said in the very end of the last letter, I’m not greatly concerned if it takes a year to sort out the things I don’t know, and get to know them. I’m living quite well, and am as happy as I’m ever likely to be anywhere. In fact I have fewer problems than I might have if I was working! What I’m trying to do at the moment is eliminate the problems that would otherwise arise if I was to present myself to prospective employers now. There are too many things I could get away with at home that I just can’t here, so I don’t think the time will be at all wasted. 

Now, before I run out of space. Books: actually, from the list I realise just how few really useful books I’ve got!! Anyway as most of the music books are ones I don’t really want, here we go: Please send:
1. Harmony: Walter Piston
2. Poems: Herrick
3. Poems: Robert Frost
4. Faber Book of Modern Verse
5. Penguin Poets
6. D H Lawrence
That’s all I would really want from that list. The only Gerald Moore I could do with I’ve never had! And the other orchestration books aren’t much use. The films books, except those cinema 51, 2, 3, weren’t really worth their money.
Secondary List:
Pan Book of Opera
3 (4?) Books on Shakespeare by H Granville Barker
Hilaire Belloc Poems and these Dickens:
(1) Dombey and Son (2) Bleak House (3) Little Dorrit (4) Pickwick Papers (5) Hard Times.

So, therefore would you, if they don’t weigh it up by too much send the books on the secondary list as well. If you can’t find some of them, probably Marilyn has them, so don’t worry too much! There are other Dickens I’d like, but that depends on weight. Davie has copies of both the Gerard Manley Hopkins and the 20th Century Music, but will you put them aside and I may yet take them. Let’s call that our 3rd List ˗ it also includes then: (3) Verse and Worse (4) Ogden Nash (5) David Copperfield (M. Has this possibly still) (6) Oliver Twist (7) Nicholas Nickleby (8) Great Expectations (9) Martin Chuzzlewit.

Incidentally, the Bach books ˗ there are two: the 48 Preludes and Fugues ˗ they should have been amongst the heavier music.

This is awfully complicated and is a darn nuisance to you, I expect. I will send you a postal order for the cost ˗ that’s a statement, not a suggestion.[Perhaps it should have been a promise!] in fact, I should again start paying my insurance ˗ it’s been on your plate long enough, hasn’t it. Will you let me know how much it is and I’ll send you money ˗ we can send up to £40 in Postal Orders here (I think!) That’s an order. Okay?

Anyway, thanks for all your trouble ˗ it’s very good of you to bother, really. Love Mike.  

[I doubt that these books were ever sent: I still have most of them, apart from the Dorothy Sayers mentioned in an earlier letter, so I suspect we either canned the idea, or my mother only sent ones that wouldn't weigh too heavily. And why didn't I think I could get them in England? I spent plenty of money on books and music there. As it was, when my wife and I left England in 1974, the bottom of the trunk containing many of my/our books collapsed with the weight, and they were left with my mother-in-law...and subsequently vanished.]

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. 

19.1.69 - London Opera Centre tours to Southampton

19.1.69

Dear Mum, just another few words, as I now have returned from Southampton, and may as well tell you about it while I have a minute free.  (Incidentally, I seem to have got over bug of earlier in the week without any more troubles, which is good.)  Well, on Friday morning, after I last wrote, I had to get up at the revolting hour of 7.00!, in order to have plenty of time to get to the Waterloo Station to catch a train at 9.47. As it was I was much too early by about ¾ of an hour, but it didn’t matte,r even though Waterloo is a very draughty station. There were only seven of us going down by train, Kiri [te Kanawa], Jane Plant (another married soprano, a bit dithery), David Smith, the Canadian tenor – and a curiously mixed up boy – 21 – sometimes very nice, sometimes downright over-rude; Keith Stoppard, and Bob Lloyd, also both married (!), Henry Ward, one of the reps, and me. Bob and Henry and I talked all the way down, and found out a bit more about each other, tho Henry is inclined to be a bit reticent, and the comparatively short time – about an hour and a half – passed quickly.

Southampton seems a nice place, though I didn’t really see much of it at all, except when travelling from A to B, but it looks a bit quieter than London. And it’s quite near the New Forest – some of which wanders into the town. The theatre we were playing at was the Nuffield Theatre, in the University and like much of the University, very new, and except for the outside nicely designed.

Everyone was to be billeted with local professors and lecturers and students, and they were all supposed to meet us before the rehearsal in the afternoon, but very few did. However it didn’t matter, and after we had collected our meal tickets, we went and had lunch in the University Union. Here for the first time I struck some of the cast playing this game (which they had apparently played all the way down in one of the cars, and it spread amongst the whole Opera Centre part of the company) which entails someone having a name beginning with, say, C, and the others have to ask him if he is, eg, an American composer (Copland) and if the person with the name doesn’t know an American composer the rest get a ‘free’ question which means they can get some more definite clue about the person. It takes an awful lot of concentration, and since it was played at practically every meal with generally anything up to ten people, and also all the way round a little trip of Southampton we took last night and also all the way back in the car this morning I feel fagged out! Came home and just slumped down on me bed for an hour.

Anyway, our rehearsal went off not badly, (with me conducing the off-stage chorus in Dido – and string quartet – tho they really could probably have done without me!) and after this I caught up with my billet. To jump ahead a bit, they turned out to be a late-twenties couple – he is an ex-second fiddle with the Allegri Quartet, which has quite a good reputation over here, and has toured a lot of the world, including NZ (tho this particular member didn’t, just Canada, and the States), and his wife is a very good cellist called Sharon McKinley – he is Peter Thomas.  And they were so informal and so nice – she was a delight in fact – that I felt very relaxed and happy with them. They only lived two minutes from the theatre so I was enabled to go and come as I pleased – they gave me the back door key!

Queen Elizabeth I

On Friday night the show went very well, I think, and even better last night. Better I think than it ever did at the Wells. The orchestra decided to have a little fun too, and at the end when the curtain calls were running thru, as Theresa Cahill comes out as Angelique, she brings the sign with her: Wife for Sale, and the orchestra all threw money up at her!  During [between?] yesterday’s shows, half a dozen of us went to see if we could see the Queen Elizabeth but couldn’t get passes, so we went across on the Hythe Ferry instead, which at least took us out over the harbour area, quite close to it. The others all reckoned she wasn’t as big as the old pair of Queens, but I wouldn’t know. She looked a fair size to me, and rather neat and lovely. However one of the wardrobe girls was also telling me that she had a closer look at it and it looks badly put together. In fact, it seems to me to be generally a rather bad piece of workmanship altogether. [This observation apparently based on what the wardrobe girl said..!]

Alan Opie - a more recent photo

After last night’s show, Alan Opie and his girlfriend Kath Smales, (also a student) and Tony Baldwin (who   Some of the humour was rather crude, and there were a few rather unbelievable lines to some of the songs, but it was a very pleasant atmosphere in spite of this.

brought me back today) and I went to a pub up the road from the theatre and walked into a sing-song that was going on, and sat down and joined in and really enjoyed ourselves.

This morning, on the way back – David Smith was with us too – we stopped off at a nicely built – in an old-fashioned style (tho a reasonably new place) – pub, and had a sort of second-breakfast: and the atmosphere was straight out of Dickens: the host seemed to be expecting us just to walk in at that particular moment – he had sausages sitting there ready and waiting, and coffee and rolls appeared out of thin air, and there was a nice roaring fire. Lovely. And not very expensive either. He told us to come back again, and made it quite obvious that he would be just as ready next time.  There was a lovely little fast-flowing stream running past the place, and a little short-haired terrier mooning about the lounge.

So that’s me Southampton jaunt – much pleasanter than I expected it to be – and with a welcome back anytime from the Thomases.

Better go and do some washing – see yah!

[handwritten] Love Mike.

PS I’ve got to play both the difficult pieces in the Master Class AND conduct the third! Good Grief!

7.12.68 The big Christmas letter

This is the longest letter by far.  For once it was typed on ordinary paper rather than on an aerogram, and it ran to a massive eight pages, with additions and postscripts.  
Started 7.12.68 
Dear Mum, in one of my most recent letters, I talked about sending you a long letter, as a part Christmas present, instead of one of these eternally too short aerograms.  And what a mess I’ve made already of this letter!  I may not send this for a few days, the last mails don’t close till the 13^th I note, so if you haven’t received my usual (nearly!) weekly letter, you’ll know when you get this, why.  Follow?  I’ve passed on what you’ve said about the Tithers to Mike, and I think he’s quite pleased about it.  Still haven’t been able to locate that chronometer makers’ place.  Apparently the bloke I was going to ask about it has left, so that closes up that avenue of detection too.  I’m not really going to grow a beard, though I still think that in this climate the more you can have covered up the better.  [Ironic, since I grew one a few years later, and have hardly ever taken it off since.]
Glad you don’t mind keeping me up on all the bods at home, not just the family, but others in the parish etc.  Funny to think that the kids round the place are starting to set out on careers.  Makes me feel as though I’m very disorganised, and only having just got started, so to speak, and even now, still not sure that I’m quite in my right field. I don’t know.  [I obviously wasn’t impressed with the fact that I’d already worked for five years in an office before touring with the Opera Company; career was the big thing in those days.] There seems to be so much that I don’t know, about basic operas even and such, and I’ve never had less confidence in my sight-reading before!  Strange is it not?  I seem to cope all right, but it seems to take a lot more work than it takes the others – or perhaps they do do the same amount of work, and I just never see it.  I find the one that I get on easiest with is Alistair.  He (and David) is 22, but very capable and originally intended taking up science! but couldn’t do it at University because he hadn’t done Latin, or some such!  Great to be able to drop something as involved as that and pick up something else like music full-time.  But Alistair always says hello, and looks pleased to see you and have a chat – David does too, but I feel he’s often a little condescending in his approach.  [Interesting that the one I maintained contact with, and got to know best, was David. I went to Alistair’s wedding but had little to do with him after that.]  He approaches music like too so perhaps it’s just his general nature.  [I wrote a footnote to this in the letter: But he seems less secure in himself than even I am sometimes – though he’s a very competent musician.] (I find it very annoying – well, perhaps not, just a bit curious – when people will talk to you one minute and then ignore you the next.  Using you as a sounding board because there happens to be no one better around obviously.  Lots of the singers are like this – actually that’s an exaggeration.  Some of them are, especially the second-year ones.) [I'm not sure who I'm talking about in regard to 'condescending' - David certainly wasn't, and I don't think Alistair was either!] Anthony is still very much the old man of the reps, it seems, though how he comes by this position I’ve no idea, and I find him the sort who isn’t prepared to accept a person’s limitations.  Fine, up to a certain point, but I think it may land him in some awkward spots later.  And he’s also the type that can get offended by being had on – this is an English fault, I think – as long as the joke is general it’s acceptable, but if it starts to knock their dignity somewhat, they get shirty.  [The difference between the Kiwi approach and the English one, I think.] Mona Semke was very much of this sort.  [Mona, an English immigrant to NZ with her family was very involved with the music scene in Dunedin, and we actually got on fairly well.]  Henry Ward is the one we least see – and has that vague, lost air, though I’m sure he’s neither, and consequently the women seem to fall for him. Especially the sopranos – the mezzos don’t seem to find him interesting, and neither do the girls in the stage managers class!  Funny!  He too, is a come-and-go acquaintance, and no one seems to know quite where they stand with him.  Give me people, any day, who will always acknowledge your presence!  That’s all I require.
I seem to have got over the cold all right, although the germ is still very prevalent in the school.  Everyone has had it, or has it still, and it’s unbelievable the number of singers who have it at present.  I had had a bottle of sherry in the flat since I first arrived, mainly for this very reason, or to occasionally soothe my ruffled feathers after a particularly wearing week – and at the time I had my cold it had only just run out – it had taken me nearly two months to finish it, so there’s little chance of my becoming alcoholic at this rate!  - and until I could go and get it myself I was unable to use it for its usual medicinal purposes! 
About the heater that Kingsley bought: he actually refuses to let me pay for it, and I have mentioned the subject once or twice more since he got it and he still won’t take anything, so!  As it is I don’t think he’s likely to run into any financial difficulties, what with his job, his organist position – did I tell you?  He’s organist for a church in the next parish – the fact that his mum is paying ten pound a month into his accounts for travelling expenses...and so on!  so I didn’t really feel that I’m being mean and sponging. 
We received the bill for the trunk yesterday – not only has it cost whatever it was in Dunedin, but it’s now over a month and a half late, and the other one has also come!, but the trunk is costing another £18!!!! at this end, and the small box £12!  Again I offered him a cheque for half - £15, but he wouldn’t take it, as he said the box was his idea, so he only wanted £9 for the trunk.  [I don’t remember, but we must have shared sending a trunk to the UK.] Well, I’m afraid I’m not really in the position to be overgenerous, and when someone says they don’t want money, I take them at their word.  Do you think this is fair enough?  Anyway, the heater is in my opinion (and, of course, do you think I can get it to work properly? It always does what the instructions says it must not do when I light it) is of questionable value, because although it heats the room reasonably, it’s next to useless for drying anything on, and consequently I’ve got a fire on here tonight to air my washing.  (And the fire went out the first time I lit it too!!!  Why, oh why, wasn’t I born practical?)
Re the Crowls, I haven’t gone up again this weekend, so that’ll be three weeks since my last visit, but this weekend we had a rehearsal this morning – Saturday – and I really felt I needed a break from travelling somewhere in London!  [There’s a footnote to this rehearsal on a separate page: This morning’s rehearsal: conducted by James (Robertson) so everyone calls him – or Big J!! and he was a lot more even-tempered, especially with me, than I expected! Keeps forgetting I’m only a student, ha! ha!]  Anyway, I can do next weekend, as I know we haven’t a rehearsal, and hope they don’t mind the long gap!  Funny isn’t it, since before I came, you were worried that I might wish myself on them too much!  Another funny thing.  Remember I said Kingsley was doing all the shopping.  Well, this weekend, he asked me if I was going up to the Crowls, as usual, and when I said no, he explained that he’d thought it might be better from now on to live entirely on small meals – for him, I hasten to add!  - at least, at weekends, I think his idea is.  So this meant that I’m now back in the position of being able to experiment if I wish!  Talk about things falling into place.  So this afternoon, after the rehearsal, I got off at the big supermarket in Barking Road, next to the open-air market it is, and spent some time trying to be a little different, but anyway finished up buying things with a bit more flavouring to them.  E.g. instead of plain spaghetti I got spaghetti Bolognese, and I bought some rice risotto too.  In tins of course – these are just for snacks at night – or tea, that is, as opposed to the reasonable meal we get at the school in the midday.  (That mess is a tear in my tape). [The typewriter tape, that is, making splodges in the words.]  Got some soups too, and also some mince for tomorrow – it should keep in the present cold atmosphere [handwritten footnote: Continual frosty, misty atmosphere, cold, but not unbearable – though I wear gloves and scarf all the time – and am thinking of buying a thick (cheap!) overcoat.] – instead of the roast that K usually turns up with at the weekend.  Not that I don’t think the latter isn’t quite a good idea – but to get a reasonably cheap roast and a meaty one is almost an impossible task, and I can’t see much point in getting a piece of meat that I for one am not going to eat very much of!
I must write to Marilyn, [a former girlfriend] too, tonight, it’s ages since she sent me her last letter – with a postal note to pay for the return stampage!  (The p.n. needless to say has long since gone in the Crowl kitty, and equally needless to say it will now have to come out again.)  How are you doing with all those bills and things I seem to have calmly left you with?  I feel rather awful about it all: the TV, the insurance, the Building Society, and all your own normal ones.  Are you coping?  If not, scrub the insurance – I can always start again. [I presume these were items I’d been paying for up until this point at home.  We did cancel the life insurance.]
What a delightful story about Fred.  Isn’t she a horror?  I nearly had a fit too when you said she’d practically laid down and died – I hope she doesn’t do anything as silly as that; she’s the one thing that I know keeps you permanent company, and I’d hate to see her bash her head on something!  Talking of cats, have you heard any more about the Mrs Leslie and Kevin [Rowlands] thing?  I’ve never heard a word from him – do you think I should start again?  did you know you included a blank sheet of paper in with your last letter?
I’m in the middle of reading a life and discussion of Puccini – seems this is another branch of the business that I’m very much behind on. (The lives of people.)  Fortunately, the tickets for the library that our [Opera] Centre Library made us members of, also enables you to get books out in any other library in London.  This means therefore that you’ve a fantastic choice.  The only trouble is, how am I going to read two or three million books in the next nine months?  Do you know – yes I’m sure you do, that I’ve been here three months?  It’s quite unbelievable.  The time just absolutely flies, and I’m convinced that the average English day is considerably shorter than those in NZ.  Perhaps when they’ve been mucking around with the Standard Time they’ve lost some hours somewhere.  This is the first year they haven’t had the change, and of course they’re making a great to-do about it in some quarters.  [The standard time used in Britain all the year round from 1968 to 1971, set one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time and equalling Central European Time.] A little boy was killed going to school in the dark, and the headlines were almost as big as those for the death of a Queen.  As I see it, the poor kid could just as easily have been killed in the daylight.  He was only five, after all.
[Edited section]  Anyway, Figaro (which is one of the most popular operas in the world no doubt, and yet this is the first time I’ve ever seen it – I was quite amused when one of the visiting reps said he’d be amazed if there was anyone in the room who’d never seen Figaro!) was very good – its faults lying rather in the opera than the cast, except perhaps Raimund Herinx, the baritone, who annoys me constantly.  I lie, actually, when I say that – he is very good as long as he doesn’t have to do anything that requires him to stand out too much from the crowd.  His aria last night was pathetic.  His Rigoletto, which I saw the night I arrived in London, was surely one of the biggest casting mistakes ever perpetrated at the Wells, his solo part in Belshazzar’s Feast was an uninteresting mess, and the best thing I’ve seen him do was a part in The Violins of Saint Jacques, where he does nothing particular, which seems to suit him fine!  [And yet, he was in constant demand throughout the singing world.]  The girl who played Susanna – Margaret Neville – though not possessed of a big voice, is a delight to behold, and exactly the right type for the part.  I found the third act very slow, mainly because absolutely nothing except the writing of a letter and its sending take place, but it takes an age!, and this is Mozart’s fault if anyone’s. 
Mentioning the Violins of S.J., by the way, I may as well tell you about that too. It’s another Malcolm Williamson – remember I saw The Growing Castle? – but this one is a little older, about 18 months, and this performance I saw was the last this season which is a pity, because you need to see a new opera a few times to get hold of it.  Particularly as far as the story goes in this one.  I’d read the first act synopsis before it started and had gleaned from amongst a welter of acts that three of the four people I’d see were related: a brother and sister, and their cousin.  When the brother proved to be in love with the cousin (a girl), and the cousin was in love (good grief) with the sister!, I thought I’d got my facts wrong – but this was all correct!  No wonder the island blows up at the end of the opera.  (They live on an island with an unfriendly volcano, a host of mad Carnival dancers and islanders and a group of neurotic French

Colonials of the Upper Class.)  In spite of all this, it was very entertaining, the ballet being far and away the best I’ve ever seen in any opera.  (The ballet in the Wells are always far too obtrusive, and stick out from the chorus as being somehow different.  But here it didn’t matter.)  And after a very lushly scored first act (horribly sensuous music, with lots of mysterious off-stage singing) the second act was delightful – a ball, (with Jennifer Vyvyan as the aforementioned brother and sister’s mother – constantly tipsy, and delightfully mad, and consequently very neatly and humorously handled by Williamson.  He seems to have these sort of funny little bits in his operas.  There was a ‘daughter’ in The Growing Castle, who finished up pasting up the whole house with paper, over doors, windows, ceiling, floor – singing ‘I-i-i-i paste, I-i-i-i paste,’ endlessly over an equally endless accompaniment.)  Apart from the very curious story, I enjoyed the opera a good deal, and don’t care what highbrow musos may say: Williamson is definitely contributing something to English opera. (He’s an Australian, by the way.)  Some very interesting effects, too.  The opera opens and closes on the sea – with a rocking boat – halfway between the floor and the ceiling (and a rocking background), and after the first of these two scenes, during an orchestral accompaniment, the sea scene clouds over, and slowly dissolves before your very eyes into a lush bush scene.  Done with gauzes but very effective.  It’s all there in the music, but all they did was turn the red lights up very high with everyone on stage staring blankly off, then total darkness, then a curtain came down with a reddish light slowly growing behind it. 
On Friday afternoon, I had nothing to do, and didn’t feel like working, having reached, once more, a saturation point – or having got musical indigestion as they say here, and so I caught a tube to Blackfriars, since I’d never got on or off there, and walked out along the Embankment to Charing Cross.  As a result I saw a part of London that I must have passed under several times and at a distance (on the river): the Temple.  I’ve been in and out of the Temple station a number of times, but always gone in the opposite direction.  The Temple, strictly speaking, I suppose is a collection of buildings comprising the lawyers’ apartments and rooms.  There are several buildings, of probably mainly last century’s vintage, possibly earlier, but on their river side, is a lovely open part, strictly for the use of members of the Temple.  Dickens, (of course) talks about the area a good deal, along with Lincolns Inn Fields (another law area, particularly for students and young lawyers, I think) which is further north, and has only a semblance of grass still in existence, let alone fields.  Approaching the Temple area from the other side – I think it comes out around Fleet St or Ludgate Hill (Hill?!) [it was nothing like the hills I lived on in Dunedin] (which was so bombed during the war that not a sign of Dickens’ old houses and buildings exist anymore – even a lot of the streets have vanished.  To digress even further, he mentions Commercial Road in one story, where the Opera Centre is now, and how going towards the river it was all slummy etc.  Well, I just noticed the other day that a number of the streets running off C. Rd towards the river are all about thirty yards long with very new buildings and estates cutting off their other ends.  I can only assume that most of this area was bombed too and that the major parts of these streets were destroyed.  An awful lot of the East is suspiciously new. Approaching, as we were, the Temple, you go into some lovely old courts that are, I think much older than Dickens.  And he mentions them too.  There’s even a plaque or memorial in one where David Copperfield, or was it one of the other boys?, is supposed to have stopped for a drink!!  Mike and I were round that way very early in my sojourn, but I must go back and have another look.  The day we were there it rained very heavily, but briefly. 
Can you smell oranges?  I’m in the middle of one at the moment.  They’re fairly cheap here, particularly off the street or market stalls.  I don’t know how these people stand it; they seem to stay right through the winter, out in all weathers.  There must be quite a collection of them, and all ages, because they’re all over London.  Some streets – Petticoat Lane, on Sundays, for example – are taken over by them more or less permanently, and in other places, the original market sites, I guess, still exist and are used.  But it’s really rather funny in Barking Road.  There they have a market right outside a whole collection of modern shops, and will even tell you to go inside if they haven’t what you want!
I’d better finish here – perhaps I’ll send it a little earlier to make sure that it arrives for Christmas – but I’ll definitely write again before then – if the mails will take the stuff!
Lots of love and the very happiest of Christmases, if I don’t get through again before then.  XXXXX
[But wait, there’s more.]
I’ve decided to start another page, because I’d intended all along to tell you about Angelique, and then forgot.  It’s really a farce with music, rather than an opera, or even an operetta. The way they are doing it in this production is as based on the French Music Hall, almost, with everybody very much aware of their audience.  The story is consequently a bit naughty, I suppose, but not crude or anything, as English farce might be.  It opens with a violent piece of orchestral music that doesn’t really go anywhere, although it introduces a theme that is used a good deal in the ensuing number and also once later as

Angelique’s own theme.  The music rushes straight into the opening scene with a crash as two plates hurtle out of Angelique and Boniface’s house.  Then Boniface himself comes running out of the house followed by a very irate Angelique who is telling the world what a terrible husband she has and how she could have had a choice of all the best suitors in the town (a seaside resort).  She is in fact a real harridan, and Boniface is a timid mouse, which is quite obvious in spite of what she says.  Anyway, she belts poor old B over the head with a vase, and he collapses.  She goes inside slamming the door, as two female neighbours look on (and a group of four ‘neighbours’ who appear from four bathing tents at the back emerge) and these delightfully down-to-earth old bags say what a terrible life she (Angelique) leads!  They have a little tune of their own, always the same, which runs into a piece of spoken-in-time-music that invariably leads to their saying they must go and not interfere! (The last time they do this, they are about to carry on into the speaking bit when they are interrupted still with their mouths open by one of the other characters.)  Charlot, a neighbour from across the square appears to comfort Boniface, and during the ensuing conversation they ponder what to do.  Charlot hits on the brilliant plan of selling her, which Boniface gladly agrees to (anything to get rid of her) as long as he (Charlot) can convince Angelique that it is a logical thing.  Charlot then goes and tells Angelique that they’ve decided to sell her and says that she shouldn’t have to put up with Boniface when there are men willing to buy such a beauty as she is – after all, don’t the men of the East buy their women, he says.  Angelique agrees, he vanity mainly having been played upon, and they agree to a signal when a customer is approaching – Beethoven’s Fifth: Tah, tah tah, Taaah!  Charlot meanwhile hangs up a sign saying Wife for sale.  The two neighbours once more appear and comment upon this lamentable wrongdoing!  Charlot appears, whistles, and an Italian appears dancing to a delightfully wrong waltz time.  Angelique begins to sing inside the house and the Italian listens gleefully.  Angelique appears at the window, and the Italian, after serenading her a little, begs her to come down.  She does, and soon he is romanticising about his villa in Southern Italy.  The song resolves into a mad tarantella, with Angelique distinctly at a disadvantage, being swept literally off her feet.  Charlot arrives, and demands the money for her, and the couple dance off.  Boniface appears hopefully, and Charlot hands him the money.  Just as they are rejoicing however, the couple return shouting at the top of their voice and Angelique throws the Italian out, then grabs Boniface and chases him inside.  Charlot puts up the sign again, and the two gossips appear, gradually changing their tune to feeling sorry for Boniface!  Charlot comes back with an Englishman, who talks of buying Angelique as though she were a horse!  How many teeth has she, etc.  Charlot gets Angelique and once more the pattern goes on: this time with a parody of those opera ensembles where several people say they are going to go and never do!  Anyway, they go, and once more Boniface appears even more timidly.  Peace has set in temporarily, because the pair are very soon back, squabbling.  She throws the Englishman out.  Then goes into the house to have a sleep.  Neighbours again, this time in support of Boniface.  A Negro appears and does a shuffling jazzy sort of dance.  Much to Boniface’s horror he runs into the house to see Angelique asleep and comes out in utter bliss – she is unbelievably beautiful.  He goes off to get some money, leaving the conspirators discussing how to get Angelique to accept the Negro.  (He is the King of the Bambaras, whatever that is!)  Charlot gets a shawl to cover Angelique’s face, so that she won’t see the Negro, but tells her that it is because it is the custom of the King’s country.  The Negro returns, and in a quartet tells her how much he loves her, in a lovely quasi-Arabic-African song.  They go off, but naturally soon return arguing.  Angelique dismisses the Negro, and is about to re-enter the house, when Boniface, thoroughly fed-up, tells her to go to the Devil; or more specifically, The Devil take you!  And the Devil appears through a trap-door and takes her off!  When the darkness clears, Boniface is alone, but not for long.  All the irate suitors return demanding their money back; Boniface puts them off temporarily by offering drinks all round, but suddenly the Devil returns, a broken spirit!  Angelique has even caused chaos in Hell, and the Devil begs Boniface to take her back. Boniface, meanwhile, has fetched a rope and is determined to hang himself, but everyone cries not to, especially Angelique, who says she couldn’t bear to see him hang himself because of her.  Celebrations ensue, but just before the curtain falls, Boniface cries out, But she is still for sale! as Angelique doesn’t show any sign of improving. 
Mad, is it not?  But quite a lot of fun.  Lots of love and Happy Christmas. 
 [But wait, there’s even more, this time handwritten.]

P.S. Forgot to mention the Cecil Beaton Exhibition I went to the other day: Friday.  It’s something like 600 of his most famous and best photos set out in periods and groups – actors, musicians, artist, writers etc.  Some are fantastic – the way the character of the subject isn’t only shown by themselves but by their grouping and relation to the ‘props’ around them.  Picasso is one of the most photographed: he appears almost as 3 generations of himself, growing gradually older, and always in surroundings like his paintings.  Marilyn Monroe is there in about 25 studies, only a few really outstanding.  Curiously enough the theatrical ones are less interesting than the non-theatre, because you expect former to be in interesting surroundings, whereas it comes as an original idea to see non-theatricals in slightly outlandish surroundings.
Lots of love
PPS or is it PSS?
Went, with Hazel and Kurt, to the former’s local flea pit picture theatre (after a brief digression to a ‘props’ shop in Cambridge Circus – three floors of theatrical props – fabulous!!) to see two horror films – by way of a complete change!  They were both fairly gory, and both quite unbelievable, unfortunately.  (The first also sported the most idiotic mid-fifties beatnik – boy, was I glad when he was done in!)  Then we went round to Hazel’s flat in Islington for a bite to eat and talked and talked and talked – on everything but music.  I left Kurt at the bus stop, finally, in the middle of a religious discussion (!!) – he’s an atheist – he thinks!  Lots of love.