31.7.69 - New flat, end of year party, and movies

31.7.69 [First letter from 18 Bethune Rd, Stoke Newington.]

Dear Mum, sorry to have been such a long time in writing again, but things this week have been hectic. Even though the Opera Centre is officially finished, my ties to the place have not yet been severed and I’ve been in there every day this week ˗ but instead of my spending money because of my presence there I’ve actually been making a little, a pound a day in fact, for coaching Peter Lyon who goes to the Scottish Opera For All shortly to work.

Last Friday I not very cheerfully set out to start transporting all my stuff up to Bethune Rd [Stoke Newington] and the one trip convinced me that turning myself into a pack-horse wasn’t the answer. (I did tell you we’ve got the place ˗ or did I? Perhaps not!) So after having frizzled up in the heatwave (or drought as they’ve called it!) on the way up here ˗ via two trains and a tube ˗ I decided this was not good enough and rang up Reg and explained my trouble and without any more ado got all the rest of the stuff moved on Sunday morning. And then I stayed overnight at their place until Tuesday night (from Sunday) because the flat has not really been completely habitable until now.

Saturday night was the last performance night and after the show most of the students, and other odd bods, went all the way down to Forest Hill, in the SE of London (though not far from Blackheath) for a party at the Jennings house. (David and his wife, Teresa Brooke, have both been students. Her mother is Patricia Hayes, the actress.) It was far and away the best party I’ve been to for a long time, and was only wound up sometime after I left ˗ at 4.00 in the morning. Alistair and his fiancee, Imogen, and David Syrus and his brother Peter came back to Blackheath for coffee, and watched the sunrise. As I had to get up for 10.30 to meet Reg, and wasn’t quite with my packing, and would have to go to Mass somewhere along the line, I decided to stay up, and went out onto the Heath when the others had gone, and walked in the dew, and watched the most fabulous of skies gradually grow lighter and brighter. There was a weird peace around, actually, with only the sea pigeons and large black crows (?) to disturb me. There were cars in the distance, but they don’t count somehow, and I only saw one other person out walking ˗ which isn’t really surprising! I thought I would have felt very sad somehow, but didn’t really seem to, just a little contemplative. I suppose the older you grow, the more you accept that everyone of your friends disappears sometime, and all of these eras in life come to and end. (It’s probably just as well ˗ being the way we are, finickity ˗ we’d probably get bored otherwise). Then I went back and had a bath, and and cleaned the windows and went to Mass (and nearly dropped off at it) but the five hours or so that seemed to be a short time for sleeping in took a lot longer to be awake through.

Anyway, for the next three nights I stayed up at the Crowls’ trying to cause as little disturbance as poss ˗ and seeing far too much TV: including Woman of the Year (with Tracy and Hepburn, one of their best ˗ with a fabulous where she tries to cook breakfast for him when she’s never been near a kitchen in her life) and the original Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, which was interesting rather than horrifying. And for some reason it was all updated to the thirties (or late twenties anyway) and had one of those revolting English actors playing the Baron [Frederick Kerr], and supposedly getting all the funny lines ˗ ugh, that’s one thing that has outdated itself. Karloff was very good incidentally, and makes the film I think, which is only otherwise notable for its direction of the not over-inspired script.

Yesterday, Mike and Hazel and I went to an early showing of Chimes at Midnight, an Orson Wells film adapted from the plays that Falstaff appears in which were collaged together to make a portrayal of him as the more important character rather than as a subsidiary to the King. There is no such thing as a bad Orson Welles film; even his failures are immensely interesting. [I couldn’t have known this from experience, not having seen most of his movies; it was plainly something I’d read.] And this has a superb cast putting Shakespeare across in a superb way.

We then went up to Mike’s for a meal, and then went to Piccadilly to see a late preview of one of Mike’s company’s new films. At 11.30. it was positively the most sick film I’ve seen, I think, but very well done for all that. It’s a terrifying exposé of the really seamy side of New York life, but with redeeming features in the characters in the story ˗ they seem victims of their country rather than themselves: it was made by an Englishman, and possibly couldn’t have been done by an American. It’s called Midnight Cowboy, and for once I’ve seen if before you possibly can ˗ but I don’t suggest that you see it. It only shows things that have existed in humanity for centuries, but isn’t in the least bit pleasant for the acknowledging of them.

The drought broke incidentally, on Tuesday ˗ the very day on which I had to go wandering around the streets ˗ it was so wet I got soaked to the skin even though I perpetually carried an umbrella. And now that that’s been and gone we’re back to the heat again. The English don’t deserve to have the lovely weather ˗ they only say they like cold better.

We’re to have a telephone in this flat ˗ presuming it won’t cost too much (it’s already here but disconnected) and I had a little Irishman here yesterday who had been about to take it away until I said we wanted it. And did he talk!! And I’ve had two grumpy little men coming and going with furniture and cookers and fridges that they can barely lift ˗ and I always seem to be doing something wrong for them. I’ll be glad to be settled in here. Love Mike. 

This isn't 18, but a house a couple of doors along:
there was a long row of houses all with the same design.
Ours was similar to the left-hand one: the window to the right of the door
was the bathroom (someone pinched my shaving gear off the windowsill once).
The bow window to the left was my bedroom. 

14.4.69 Four letters in one...so this is *very* long

[The next four airletters were all sent together as parts I- IV. They were apparently all written consecutively on the 14th April.]

Dear Mum, it’s taken me nearly ten minutes just to go this far and I don’t seem to be having much success. [The airletter starts off typed, reverts to handwritten, then four lines later reverts to typed.] I was trying to be clever and use the office machine that is at present in the common room (instead of the C.R. machine which chews up the paper!) but I can’t seem to get it to work for me somehow. [The airletter was apparently abandoned till the next day, when it was continued at home on my own typewriter.]

Well, it’s the next day, and I’m doing this standing up waiting for my breakfast to cook. Well, we’ve had a hectic and very lively but also very enjoyable time since I last wrote to you. I don’t mean at the flat of course ˗ I’ve seen John about twice in the last 10 days, and Julie less. I quite honestly don’t know whether John still lives here or not! He said he was coming back on Sat and I got some meat for Sunday dinner and tea, and he still hasn’t arrived and I ate the lot! I don’t know if he has a job or what ˗ but as long as he pays the rent I don’t suppose it really matters whether he lives here or not.

Anyway, on the day I last wrote we were just beginning the most wonderful spell of hot weather. We had 3 days of it before it became overcast again tho it did remain hot. Everybody has suddenly dispensed with all the paraphernalia of winter: coats, hats, scarves, gloves and so on, and looks alive again. Since the last weekend however the skies have returned to their habitual grey, and umbrellas have been much in evidence, altho a lot of people seem to have thought that (like myself) once you have thrown off your winter coats it’s a shame to have to put them on again and so we haven’t bothered. In spite of the rain and wind it seems to be staying mild so there may be hope yet.

To recap on the week’s events, anyway. On Tuesday I had arranged to go out to David and Teresa Jennings’ place: she was doing an audition in the Stuyvesant semi-finalist (four prizes of scholarships to the Opera Centre next year) and I was to go and do some coaching. [The only reference I can find to David is here; it’s a very common name, of course. Teresa was actress Patricia Hayes’ daughter but I don’t know what happened to her subsequently. Both were at the LOC.] This was the first of the really brilliant days, and I was sitting on our back patio when Teresa came to pick me up. I wasn’t prepared for the weather however and was still garbed in warm winter woollies! The Jennings were both wandering round in bare essentials at their home. A French au pair girl and another who works down the road were also in their garden, dressed as I was: in the past season’s apparel. The Jennings house is just one of many semi-detached in South-East London, but it is terrifyingly lived in, inside. The furniture and props [I don’t know if I meant theatre props] cover so much space that you have to wend your way through all sorts of articles to get anywhere. Rather fascinating, however. And on the walls they have photographs and prints of a variety of ages and these turn out to be Jennings’ respective ancestors dating back to the 17th century. I must go to Somerset House one of these days and track down some of my relatives.

Photo courtesy of Roger Perriss, flickr.com

After I’d done the coaching which went quite well (although she said she didn’t sing too well the next day at the audition ˗ but, thankfully, neither did a lot of the others; glad it wasn’t my coaching!) I went to Earls Court and met Hazel, who had suggested the previous night (after running into one of the many fairs that crowd London at Easter) that we go to Battersea Park. She was working at Earls Court and the Park is only a short bus ride across one of the bridges. The park itself is a great expanse of land, in which a smaller area is devoted to the fun fair. Well! I’ve never had such a nerve-wracking night. I think if we’d gone alone we would neither of us have gone on anything, but we were both setting out to save face by showing that we weren’t scared of anything and consequently went on every one of the monstrosities in sight. NEVER AGAIN! We started off on the Ferris Wheel which is much like F.W.s anywhere in the world ˗ only unpleasant when you slowly go over...the...top...! Next we went on a machine in which you were alternatively thrown at the side of the roundabout and then at the middle. This wasn’t too bad, except that the centrifugal (you’ll hear a lot about him before I’m finished!) force put all of Hazel’s weight onto me and nearly squashed my shoulder. (Hazel isn’t really a light young lass, and I haven’t put on any weight!)

I don’t remember which of the next two we went on, but both were singularly unpleasant. One had you in a bucket seat with your friend, and as well as going round at some considerable speed, young blokes riding the central merry-go-round pushed your personal bucket round at an operative moment which sent you going round at a speed rather faster than sound I think. My neck nearly broke in that one! Funnily enough Hazel liked that one ˗ heaven knows why! She even wanted to go back on it!! [Some people don’t learn: a few years later my wife, Celia, and I went to Battersea and got into a similar machine: we both came off it feeling so dizzy that we walked drunkenly for quite some distance.]

The other revolting machine, also Hazel’s suggestion, was a circular disc, called, inappropriately to my mind, the Satellite, in which you were sat in one of a number of small joined seats, and then this thing went round and then tilted! By some curious coincidence I again had Hazel on top of me, all the way, and this put my shoulder out of joint completely I think! Actually, once I got accustomed to the sheer torture of it, it was not too bad. We were both getting brave by this time and decided to go in a thing called the Dive Bomber. From the ground, and a distance, it looked as though you were completely encased in a little elongated egg-shaped vehicle that did a flip in mid-air so that you never went upside down.

PART II

After we’d paid our money we suddenly saw that the thing had only a partial top of caging, and some of it was open to the air. It seemed ominous when they strapped you into the cage, and bolted the door shut. It was when we were in mid-air that we found that at a certain given stage of your trip you weren’t actually upside-down, but that you looked at the earth from a vertical position ˗ it was like being suspended in mid-air by nothing more than a piece of leather strap. First we only did one flip to get us up top while they strapped in two more unfortunates, and this sitting in mid-air discussing the future was the worst part. Or so we thought ˗ when we started to go round in a seemingly quite uncontrollable way, We then knew that the beginning was quite pleasant! I hadn’t shut my eyes up until then on anything, but I did during that trip, and would have screamed aloud if I’d thought it would do me any good. Thank God, nothing in this world lasts, and even that nightmare came to an end, and Hazel and I went off and had a couple of sherries each!! We were quite cheerful ˗ we’re both the sort to laugh rather quickly about things like that, but we both shook for about a half-hour afterwards. I feel sick at the thought of it now.

Anyway, we’d saved the Big Dipper up until the end, and strangely enough this turned out to be quite mild in comparison. I wouldn’t have minded going on it again in fact, but Hazel didn’t seem too keen! The worst thing about it isn’t the sudden descent downhill after a slow climb (if you’re brought up on cable cars, this sort of thing shouldn’t bother you) but when on one descent you suddenly go into pitch blackness it’s amazing how it puts the wind up you. [The Maryhill Cable Car in Dunedin began its trip by suddenly dropping over the edge a fairly steep hill; you could slide off the wooden seat if you were little.] I think the most horrible kind of torture would be to throw someone into sheer darkness without his being aware of what was in the darkness. (The ghost trains at fun fairs spoil themselves by having too much [of the ride] in too much light. ) After that we went home!

On Wednesday I went into the Centre as arranged to do some work with one of the blokes who is doing a 20-minute program for some contest (I think I’m accompanying him) later this month, and also to run over the music that was to be done that night at a Policeman’s concert with Peter Lyon and Mary Masterton (she’s from NZ). It was another hot muggy day, and none of the singers at the Stuyvesant were feeling very happy ˗ one poor guy even fainted. Anyway I went up to Peter’s for tea. Peter is one of the few London-born people in London, and talks 19 to the 12, in a sort of overbearing way. Basically I reckon he’s a nice guy, but he’s got a curious chip on his shoulder that puts other people’s backs up with regularity. I discovered at his home that his father is exactly like him ˗ very tactless ˗ and I think the best thing Peter could do is to go and live in a flat somewhere. His father talks to him man to man, but somehow contrives to show to others the he (dad) is the boss and knows all....! Anyway, they gave me steak for tea, so I can’t really complain. And Somerset cream on a very nice apple pie. I’m glad to see some Londoners have taste buds. [Just when you think I’ve managed to overcome my know-what-other-people-should-say-and-do attitude, I manage to undercut it again, and it gets worse.] (If you could smell the stink of the stale and nasty hot dogs they sell all over Central London, especially Piccadilly Circus, in little open-air stands, you’d know what I mean.)

The concert went off reasonably well, although it was such a variety concert that we didn’t seem to fit in somehow. Peter had to follow Jack Warner (74! ˗ the Dixon of Dock Green man, and also a long-time entertainer), and a pop-group. Still, they paid us on the spot, which is a change, and a fiver too for something like half-an-hour’s work.

The next day was Hazel’s birthday, and she, David Gorringe, and I had planned to do something interesting to celebrate it. Originally we were going to picnic in Epping Forest, but decided on Hampstead Heath instead ˗ although the weather had decided to change as well that day. I had to meet David at Charing Cross, but he didn’t get my card about it until Thursday morning, and missed the fast train by one minute ˗ he was home in Ashford, Kent. (Incidentally I live in Kent too, altho we’re also part of Greater London.) So David sent a message up over the wire to Charing Cross to say he’d be late, and even his casual comments somehow went the distance too. They told me at C.C. that it was suggested I go off and have a drink somewhere! [I don’t remember what form of communication this was, but it sounds intriguing.] Actually I went to a cartoon theatre next door to the station, and saw the same cartoon as I’d already hated at another cinema, and two very old, but absolutely marvellous Tom and J’s, and half of a Batman episode! Then I picked Dave up, and after a detour to his flat we went on to the Heath to meet Hazel and Kathy, one of here friends. I don’t know what people think of my friends ˗ altho they always seem to get on with them ˗ but Hazel seems to have the most curious lot of mates. Kathy is very vague, and I’ll introduce you to some more later.

Well, we picnicked on the Heath beside one of the ponds and had a lovely lunch of healthy foods: Russian salad, cold (or is it cole slaw), apples, brown bread, lumps of cheese, coffee, tomatoes, etc. [Plainly I was unfamiliar with coleslaw at this point.] Then we just played around (except Kathy, who wandered) like 3 kids ˗ ran, skipped, capered, found an old ball with a hole in it in a pond which provided a good deal of amusement because it had a life of its own, and chased and played with other people’s dogs. Sounds madly irresponsible, doesn’t it, but while we 3 can enjoy ourselves thoroughly, we wouldn’t hurt or annoy others ˗ even if we might surprise them. [I think most Londoners were, and still are, beyond surprise at what other people get up to.]

PART III

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

Where was I? I had to go out and get another airletter to finish! Oh, yes. Kathy had to go early so as we were walking her back to the station we met another Opera C student, (Alison?) and she invited us up to her flat for some tea. So up we went and had a nice rest and coffee, and biscuits, and finally left. We still had some time to fill in so thought we’d go somewhere else and finished up, after some discussion, in tubing to St Paul’s, where we wandered around for some time before we went up into the dome. We should have gone up earlier because it was shutting as we were half way up. Anyway, we whispered in the Whispering Gallery while somebody tuned the organ downstairs, and discovered just what a fabulous building it is. (Although fairly obviously Wren had been to St Peter’s the week before!) The detail in the place is as usual astonishing ˗ but we forget I suppose that detail like this takes years to accumulate in a massive building, and it’s silly to say that modern buildings of a similar nature are too plain etc.

Anyway, we did have time to go up outside the roof, though not so high as we might, and the view is really rather fab. Although London is spoilt by having too many four-square buildings. You really notice from that height.

Anyway, after this Hazel went off in a taxi, while David and I wandered a bit more before we went back to his flat to collect my present for H. I got her a kettle! She just didn’t have one ˗ always bought something else instead, she said - and a card with ‘Don’t be discombobulated ˗ bless the day you was created.' And then we went our way to her flat, where she, and I think Kathy, had prepared a marvellous spread of biscuits with Russian salad, cole slaw, etc!! No, it wasn’t quite that bad; I don’t really know what was on half the crackers. At the party were Lorna Brindley and her boyfriend, Jim ˗ she’s a mezzo,he a tenor, and both should go far. Lorna, and I think, Jim, is Scottish, and has a marvellous down-to-earth approach to life, and a great sense of humour. [Lorna's 'Scottishness' seems incorrect, according to the link.]

Mike [Tither] came, and 3 of Hazel’s friends: Derek and Fran, married: he sat in the corner and played records that no one listened to all night, and Fran, though she started out being with the crowd eventually receded into the background. The third ‘friend’ (I suspect Hazel labels everyone she knows as a friend!) was Graeme, an Aussie, a writer, and who is thoroughly bored with all those around him. Seems to me he has problems ˗ especially if he’s a writer! The party went into the two groups: these 3 and the rest. Jim left early in the evening, after arranging to see me for some coaching on Monday, [handwritten] and the rest of this is being in a train so it may be a bit obscure! Well, after we polished off supper and had drunk quite a bit of wine ˗ I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t get drunk ˗ I either fall asleep, ie, get so tired I don’t want anymore, or else get happy to the point that I don’t want anymore. There seems to be an inbuilt mechanism that helps me to keep control. Not that I’ve tried to get drunk, nor been at a party where it’s been routine to overdrink so perhaps I’m being presumptuous. Anyway, Lorna, Hazel and I (David had gone back to Ashford and Mike was talking) decided, just for a change, and to get some air, to go for a walk, and liven up the first pub we came to. Well, the pub was incapable of being livened up and they looked a bit askance at us that anyone should think of going out and enjoying themselves. (Pub-going, in the suburbs, is a ritual, not a pleasure, or a night out.)

Anyway, after we played the jukebox, it was nearly closing time. There was an absurd barmaid in this place ˗ she was about 40, and remarkably plain (and seemed to think plain, too, if you follow) but she had a pink bow tied onto a bun!! Aagh! [Hard to know why this impressed itself on my brain, but who knows the vagaries of a young man’s mind.]

We went back to the party where things were still meandering along, and by this time I’d been invited to stay the night again (Lorna was [staying] anyway) and since we three were feeling tired, and the others apparently were not, we were in a bit of a spot. We were, however, in such a cheerful condition that we set about removing all the furniture from the living room as a hint that the people should go. We didn’t have enough courage to shift the chair that Fran was sitting on, and anyway our plan didn’t seem to get through to these

PART IV

folk. No doubt their thinking isn’t, or wasn’t, quite as illogical as ours. Finally after much yawning and general carrying-on, they left, and I settled down very quickly on that revolting camp stretcher, tho once again I was too tired to care.

Next morning Jim came round and cooked breakfast! He’s an ex-chef apparently, and made a great mixed dish of sausages, fried bread, toast, fried eggs and something else ˗ was it tomatoes? I was still feeling energetic enough to have already done all the party dishes before he arrived, and all his dishes after breakfast. So I felt that perhaps I wasn’t entirely useless around the place.

Meanwhile I wanted to get seats for Megs Jenkins and LindsayCampbell for Saturday night’s performance of Fledermaus, and so had to go into the Centre. Hazel, during some part of the Schicchi season, had left her valuable papers in the safe at the Centre, including her cheque-book, and asked me to pick it up for her. So later, I met her in Charing Cross station, in the midst of a crowd waiting for delayed trains, at rush hour (!) ˗ C.C. is the smallest station, fortunately ˗ and we then went and had a meal at one of the 1000 Italian restaurants round London, and went to the NFT to see an old (1936) Hitchcock called Sabotage. A very curious and slightly sick film. The next day I went out to Holland Park to do some coaching with Marjorie McMichael [also] ˗ an ex-Opera Centre girl, and got 30/- for my trouble. I’m going there again now, though I shouldn’t imagine that I’ll be there as long this time as before. After my previous time, Marjorie and I went and had a meal at an Indian restaurant; the first time I’d ever done so. I had something called Malay Meat which consisted of meat (lumps of beef I think cooked with pineapple and other odds and ends, and served with an enormous plate of rice, some of which I had to leave. [I don’t remember this meal, but I do remember one at another Indian restaurant ˗ near Hampton Court, I think ˗ when I must have ordered a meal that was very spicy, and thought I was going to die.]

On Sat night I took my slip to the Wells to collect tickets and they informed me that they didn’t give out complementaries on Saturdays. I was rather upset because it meant telling Megs and Lindsay that they couldn’t go, but they took it reasonably well. Mike and I went to a set of eight plays on the subject of marriage (after missing the first one because we had to wait longer than expected in a Pizza Bar ˗ the pizza was nice all the same). The actors (4 of them) were generally rather better than the plays. [I think this would have been ‘Mixed Doubles’.]

On Sunday Kevin and I went to an Italian film about Oedipus Rex, which was very good. Filmed in Morocco with lovely photography all harsh with the vibrant colours; and the acting and direction was on a vibrant level too, which left you a bit worn out. [I think this was the Pasolini version made in 1967.] Yesterday I went into the Centre and coached, working with Moira Paterson in the morning on a group of songs she’s doing for Scottish BBC. It’s amazing how much different a song becomes when you get the singers, by suggestion and assistance, to open their eyes to its possibilities. One song that seemed very dull became very exciting and it pleases me as much as them when they get it working properly. Last night Mike, Mickey (a girl friend of his) and I went to Tosca ˗ a Zefferelli production. It was fabulous and tremendously exciting.

Love Mike. 

16.1.69 Post-Christmas activities

I started adding these letters I sent from the UK to my mother back in the sixties to the blog some time ago...the last one I added was in May this year. So there's a certain irony/serendipity about the first line of this letter ...

16.1.69

Unending apologies for making you wait so long for a letter, but I really have not an idea where the time has gone.  If I thought I was busy last term – I didn’t know what was coming in this one!  WOW!  The mails have been all up the whop here because I got two aerograms from you on one day last week – dated four days apart. 

Re Reg’s Christmas presents: he got yours prior to Christmas by about a fortnight, and we spent one Sunday morning making a quite detailed trip through the book, along with the other one you sent a couple of years ago, on Dunedin.  I don’t suppose you got my present in time, either, in spite of the airmail, and Mike was telling me he was a bit annoyed because he’d sent stuff way back in October and it only arrived in the New Year.  All the mails were fine at the end – can’t understand them down under.  Thanks for all the Peanuts. 

Kingsley told me this morning a nice bit of news before I went to the Centre – he’d been offered board at a place – one of the Old Hostels in Notting Hill Gate –that’s sort of West – it’s a place where he has his own room he thinks, and they provide full board for £4-10-00 a week.  It means mainly less expense travelling, and his mother won’t be sending him anything more for a while for fares, as she had a heart attack just recently (but seems to be okay) as he’s quite a bit closer by tube to the Guildhall.  Hope he’ll be happy there.  It’s obviously got other advantages: TV, etc, but I wonder if he’ll get much peace.  Anyway, it left me in a bit of a spot because I don’t particularly want to move out of here, inconvenient as it may be in some ways, and I had visions of shifting to a bedsitter or what have you.  He was definitely going, come what may anyway, so I thought when he said could I find someone to share the place: Who would come?  The only person I could think of was David Syrus, one of the other reps, not mentioned in these dispatches for a while, and who I knew lives in one room in North Central or somewhere, and might be glad of a bit more space.  I thought though that he was probably paying less rent, and mightn’t be very agreeable, in view of the way-out-ness of the place.  I put it to him, after a few quick prayers to the Good Lord, and his eyes lit up immediately!  Seems he is actually paying £2-15-00 a week, as well as 1/- for the bathroom, and this was one advantage.  Also it’s that much closer to the Centre, about 20 minutes on his bike, if that, and he has the 3 rooms.  He hasn’t said definitely yet, because, he has paid a month’s rent in advance when he first shifted into his room, and doesn’t know if he’d get it back.  So!  A change is in the air by the looks of it.  Kingsley has to leave by the 25^th, so I may have to have the place to myself for a fortnight or so.  That’s the stop press news. 

Back to the previous weekend.  I haven’t told you about my Worthing trip have I? Kevin and I went down on the Sunday, (after standing on opposite sides of a box notice board waiting for each other for about 20 minutes at Victoria) and – I have told you about this haven’t I?  Sure I have.  Perhaps it’s not so long since I last wrote after all.  I think I’d better work backwards with the news, as I’m not sure now where I left off.

Last night Kevin and I went to Orpheus in the Underworld, which is now in its ninth year revival – it was first performed in ’60, and has toured the world since then.  It was fairly good though a little tired, and obviously an awful lot of the sparkle of the original performances has vanished.

On the previous Sunday, I’d come home in the evening about nine, feeling not to hot, but I thought I was just tired.  However during that night, my head went on fire, and my legs ached something terrible.  This is a symptom as far as I’m aware of one of the 'flus at present in fashion, and though I got up and went to the Centre on Monday – had to do an Angelique rehearsal – I came home early and stayed in bed till Wednesday morning, consuming sort of alternately: oranges, Bovril, and aspirins!  Actually I’d had a headache at the Crowls on Sat, but it had seemed to go off, although I slept terribly on Sat night – worse than I usually do there!  (I just can’t get used to sleeping in hot houses.  Now I just take all the top bedclothes off, except for a couple of blankets, and sleep like that.) (They provide: a hottie, 3 blankets, a heavy eiderdown, two rugs!) I’d gone up to the Crowls on Friday night – at 11.15 (with my uncles’ acquiescence – he didn’t mind at all he said, they always stay up till midnight – they do too – nearly knocks me out the way they go on!) – because originally Mike and Mervyn Jarvis were going to go The Force of Destiny (a new Verdi production) but we couldn’t get in, so we went to the pictures instead!  It was a film called Hot Millions with Peter Ustinov (who also collaborated on the script, and it showed in the dialogue), Robert Morley (in two tiny scenes) and my favourite actress: Maggie Smith.  (Remember The VIPs? She was Rod Taylor’s secretary; and also Desdemona in Olivier’s Othello!) And the first thing Ustinov does in the film, almost, is get on my bus! A no. 15 going to East Ham.  I felt quite proud.  And it’s full of bits of recognisably London, not landmarks, but streets that look very familiar, and even shops.  And there was also a shot in Rome from the top of St Pete’s, which I’d been on!  Yippee!  See it if you can – it’s a ‘take Monica Stokes type’!  [Because my auntie Monica would have laughed throughout.] and don’t let the people leaving at the end let you think it is the end; it’s not quite. 

Anyway, after this, I went, via the new Victoria Line, which to my uneducated eye didn’t seem anything remarkable, except perhaps that it was a little cleaner!, to the Crowls, where my illustrious uncle was planning his usual exhausting day’s outing for me!  It was supposed to be the Vic. and Albert Museum, but we went to Madame Tussaud’s instead.  (Had to go round Regent’s Park to park the car.  Fabulous fabulous houses and mansions round there.  All Georgian with pillars

Part II

and statuettes on the outside of buildings, etc.  Lovely stuff. In one part they’ve pulled down all but the front of a whole section of these houses, and all that’s standing looks like a whole lot of sightless eyes with the sky – grey – behind. Madame Tussaud’s is most curious. None of the models are quite life-size – always just a bit smaller it seems, and some of them have heads that are much too big. Some in fact are so bad they’re not even recognisable ([Samuel] Johnson for one, and heh, heh, heh, Holyoake for another). However the majority are good, and some are remarkable.Though the show biz section is consistently bad, and out of date. The Chamber of Horrors was in a state of repair, and only a few murderers were still sitting in their coffins. Most of the older exhibits are excellent, though they include rather odd subject matter. And there is a section that represents the two lowest floors of the ship the Victory with Nelson dying in one bit, and the usual sound of men dying all around and guns booming and the ship creaking and the smell of gunpowder, and generally it just made me feel sick. All the facts and figures of how Nelson won his great victory. And a footnote: 300 (?was it?) of the men in the battle went deaf as a result of it. Great...

We went onto the Planetarium after lunch and tho it was only for ½ an hour it was fantastic. You go into a great round room holding possibly 5 or 600 people and seat yourself and look, while you’re waiting, at cut-out silhouettes of London landmarks set up round the entire room with lights behind them. In the centre is a machine that is in fact a massive projector controlled from one side of the room by a panel with a man commentating. The roof is dome-shaped and when the show starts we grow [go?] through a quick version of the sky coming into night as the stars gradually appear. And then the whole thing moves right across the dome, at the will of the operator. Also on the dome are flashed pictures, sometimes moving, of close-ups, so to speak of other galaxies that appear like masses in our sky; the Milky Way for instance. This was much more interesting than the two hours at Madame T had been. And above all it made me feel terribly insignificant. If you move one inch forward in your chari as you read this, you will be one inch closer to England. That is comparable to what our voyage to the moon is in size to the entire galaxy we inhabit. And that’s only one of millions of galaxies. Doesn’t say much for our importance, does it.

Back to the Crowls for tea, and Winnie Crowl came too. Remember her? She’s Reg’s cousin. A dear old lady who really makes an effort, like Reg, to talk to you as an equal, not as a youngster – tho she’s getting onto 65 or 70. She doesn’t always succeed, anymore than Reg does, but they do try not to alienate themselves from someone who is so much younger. With a little persuasion I played some Beethoven sonatas – bits of them for them, explaining as I went along what was happening. Reg recorded most of it! Good grief! Things must sound pretty terrible on that piano actually, because it’s out of tune, and sticks, and notes won’t repeat, and oh, dear.

On that morning, Nina had said just before we went out that she would wash my scarf for me if I didn’t think that was being rude suggesting it! I accepted gratefully of course, and she gave me one for the day, and then gave it to me full stop! She’s a real dear, and I don’t think Mavis could do without her. She looks after Margaret much more it seems to me than her parents (!) and Marg is really attracted to her. So am I – she’s lovely, and has a marvellous sense of fun. I rather think perhaps that Reg has been living in a house with 3 women too long, and this is why I’m so acceptable! I often wonder if Mavis really cares to have me there every other week, although she too is extremely kind, and I’m no doubt doing her an injustice, because of her very quiet way. They also washed a shirt that I’d left there by mistake over Christmas – I’d had a funny feeling I was a shirt down! – and also told me which soap powders were best for whites. We chat about all sorts of domestic things there! (!!!!!: Penalty!)

Patricia Hayes

Anyway, on Sunday after lunch Reg took me over to Ann and Pat’s – five minutes away – as I had to play for these two at some Charity do. It turned out to be for the Assumption Sisters’ friends: the people from the families they’ve helped over the years. It’s an annual affair: one week (last) for the men, and the one we went to for the women. And they provide supper in a huge room, at tables, not buffet either. It was one of those thrown together concerts, and the worst part about the girls’ items, was that they didn’t know them. I hate that, I’m afraid, and find it very embarrassing. But the biggest surprise of all for me was that several actors came along to do some poetry readings and in the group was John le Mesurier – you do know, from George and the Dragon: the Colonel!  And he’s also, as they said, been in practically every British comedy ever made. He was a delight. Whether or not he was acting all the time I don’t know, but he was just like he always is. Must be his public image. He read a couple of poems, and said he’d never done this sort of thing before, and wasn’t quite sure if he’d do it right, and made every word he said before he even started like the lines from a comedy. Marvellous. The others were all good too, and though some of their faces seemed familiar, their names meant nothing. (One of the women at the do was Patricia Hayes, an actress. Ring any bells. Made films, a few, round the 40s and 50s. [The daughter was Teresa Jennings; she’s mentioned in the obituary. She was small, like her mother. Her husband was considerably taller.] Another student has a brother in a pop-group which I’d heard of back home.) The concert went on rather long however, with too many bad items, including ours, and not enough good. There was a lady ventriloquist (looking very like BerthaRawlinson!*) who was very good: her [handwritten] dummy took over completely – and had an argument with a lady in the audience! In fact it really does seem that these people get a bit schizophrenic as the dummy did all the talking nearly.  

Centre, a student, I mean, but married to another one of the students, is the daughter of

LOTS of love, Mike

*Bertha Rawlinson - see entry in Te Ara Biography.