5.2.70 - more about the decision-making

5.2.70

Dear Mum, what fabulous news about Monica [Hannagan]! But do you know when you said in your previous letter that she was amongst the finalists I knew she would get the prize, and I wasn’t in the least bit surprised when your next letter came! The closest I’ll ever get to second sight perhaps! Give her my congratulations and love will you, please; she really is a marvel. What a terrible photo of everybody, though ˗ Les Simpson looking as though his hair was flying away in great tufts, and the Festival Queen looking pleased, but more beautiful than pleased...! And Monica’s by no means middle-aged, anyway; she’s the one relation whose age I can positively remember: she’ll always be ten years older than me, to the month! [I'm not sure which of the several prizes Monica won over the years this was; she went in for competitions where you had to answer general knowledge questions.]

If you see Des Stokes, by the way, thank him for his letter, and tell him that the reason for the long delay on the last article is that I temporarily lost the note I had of what he wanted, and since I’ve now found two or three more shops where there is a likelihood of my finding what he wants I’ll give it another try.

I started piano lessons again on Monday last ˗ eeergh! it was like going back to school again. But Doris is very nice and even suggested that if I wasn’t tied up to staying in Stoke Newington there was a vacancy in the house next door to her. However in spite of the extra amount it costs for fares I don’t really wish to leave this flat: the six of us (or seven generally) get on so well (with occasional mix-ups) that I don’t fancy going to live on my own, albeit above a landlady. Doris even gave me a guinea off the fees as well, and also said she has a whole lot of good secondhand music that might be of use to me.

We discussed the sort of exams I should probably try for and I’m inclined to think that it’s little use merely going for another performer’s exam: I only learn pretty much what I already know. I think it would be better to go for a teacher’s exam even though it means a lot of studying over at least the next full year, because then, finally, I might have something to fall back on that I could do competently, rather than having to go for crumming (yes, crumming, it’s a newly invented word) office jobs where I’ll barely be existing on the sort of money they’ll give me. The thing is that most of the better singers at the Centre last year had at least been through something like the Royal College, while the reps had been through Varsity, and somewhere along the line if I’m to be even partly as competent as they are at their work (though it seems to me I did have certain advantages over one or two of last year’s, and this year’s lot as well) I must have a wider general knowledge of music behind me. I keep feeling myself to be the talented amateur in a professional world as I am at the moment. I always think that I ought to be a ‘qualified’, so to speak, professional, with a more secure foundation than that on which I’m based just now. And it’s no use going on merely on my own, I can see. Even though the time wasn’t wasted: I learnt quite some theory in the time, but I must have someone driving me, because I’m basically so lazy!! I’m never really prepared to work unless I have to ˗ I have a little bit of my brain that says things will always fall into my lap. [Up to this point they had, to an extent, especially in New Zealand.] I know this just isn’t so. One eventually becomes a vegetable under those conditions.

National Children's Home, in Harpenden.
The buildings were still the same when I worked there
many years after this photo was taken.

Reg was quite pleased when I told him ˗ I think I’d been worrying him a bit, though he’d never actually say so. I know I don’t have to explain myself to you to any extent, but I like to let you have as full a picture of what I’m (now) trying to achieve. And anyway learning is never a waste of time ˗ even if you turned round and never used it again (like some of the things you learn at school) the brain expansion achieved is of great use! This teacher’s exam will involve learning not only theory and practical points but also teaching ones, and who knows ˗ they will no doubt come in handy if I can ever working satisfactorily as a rep. It doesn’t bother me at the moment if do or don’t, but I think my idea of a short ago of giving up music entirely and devoting myself to Good Works (in some shape or form: I think I had something the National Children’s Home in mind) is not very practical. [Reg was involved with NCH, and after he retired, he worked for them in an accounting capacity. Plainly this idea didn’t go away completely: I eventually wound up working at NCH a couple of years later: still under the impression that somehow I wasn’t doing enough for other people.] I think existing extra-musically would quite possibly drive me mad! [That is, without doing music at all.] Anyway, I’ll let you know what progress we make.

About my other decision of last week - writing to the CIB: I finally sent my questionnaire off on Sunday night. I had been going to wait a while, but finally didn’t see any point. The biggest problem (apart from trying to describe yourself to any extent, which was terrifying because you feel all the time that you may be giving the wrong impression) was to supply a photograph of myself. So I finally went and took four of myself (for 3/-!) in one of the booths that develop them and everything on the spot within minutes. They were four rather terrible photos, so I sent the least bad, which isn’t at all what I think I look like, but obviously is since we’re led to believe the camera doesn’t lie! I’ve had an acknowledgement (receipt) this morning, and now wait (still), with a deep terror way down inside and tremendous good humour on the outside, for some results. The Good Lord has never seen so much of me before! I’ve been in and out of any church that comes by, more asking that he just keep a watchful eye on things rather than necessarily make everything turn out exactly right without problems! But, as the CIB suggests, it’s often the only way to meet R.C’s in a place like London. The people at the Parish Church are not especially friendly ˗ I don’t help either, but they seem to be rather middle-aged!!

About the Time magazines ˗ there really isn’t any point in keeping them, is there? Wouldn’t they be of more use somewhere, where they’ve being read?? Leave it up to you, Love Mike (heh, heh!) [I'd subscribed to Time magazine for some years, so there was a stack of them - mostly unread - in my bedroom wardrobe at home.]

P.S. I’ve only had one lot of books ˗ the other’s must have been held up somewhere. 

15.12.69 - Shopping, family, operas, Catholicism

15.12.69 [Typed with a new ribbon on two aerogrammes]

Dear Mum, it shouldn’t be hard to guess what I’ve finally bought myself. And what a job it was to get one! It was hard enough finding a typewriter shop (and of course there turned out to be a much closer one) but then it was one of those places where they expect you to find everything yourself, and in the end I had to give up and get the assistant. This is one of the more annoying things over here about the shops ˗ it’s okay if you’re just browsing, but if you’re in a hurry, and want something, they still ignore you. Foyles, that great and renowned bookshop, is the worst I’ve struck. There it takes you ages to work out who the assistants are, and then they turn out to be all foreigners with only limited English, and once you’ve got what you want, you have to re-find the assistant, who then wraps the book, but doesn’t take your money; for this you have to find a cashier! And then once you’ve paid your money, you have to find the wretched assistant for the third time and hope he hasn’t given your purchase to someone else!

I’ve been doing some other purchasing too. I was so displeased with the Christmas present I sent you after I’d sent it that when by accident I saw another elephant in the Shepherd Market, in Mayfair, (though what an elephant was doing in Shepherd Market I don’t know) I thought that since it was a much smaller elephant I would send it by airmail, and perhaps it would reach you before Christmas. (Margaret’s birthday, by the way, is the 23rd of December.) [Margaret Crowl, my only English cousin.] I haven’t actually posted it yet, but it’s all wrapped up anyway. When I’ve sent it I’ll let you know a little more about it and its origin.

Re the Crowls ˗ I’ve finally been up again (it was two months since the last time, though I don’t know how the time could have gone like that) and things are sorting themselves out for them. Nina is to move into a room above those occupied by a man who looks after the ‘almshouses’ and will share a bathroom and kitchen with another lady. This room is bigger than what she presently occupies in Woodland Way, so it should suit her reasonably well. She is apparently now happy about the whole idea and glad it would seem to be going out on her own. I didn’t see her all weekend, as for the most part she was in bed with the flu that is knocking down Britishers like flies (but not NZs) and which had a touch of pleurisy with it. And anyway she still, I think, isn’t speaking to Reg!

She and Margaret had been to a concert in Westminster on the night I arrived, and it turned out the soloist had been Peter Baillie, who was Albert Herring in the production I worked on at home! Funny how people pop up again like that, isn’t it? The Crowls were as usual pleased to see me, and spoilt me left right and centre. And to cap it all they gave me my Christmas present when I left because I may now be going to have Christmas dinner with Mike and Kate (the Crowls said I was under no obligation to go up there, which at least lets me know they’d like to have me but won’t force me, so to speak). I went all the way home quite sure in my mind it was a rather large box of chocolates, but it turned out to be a large, beautifully illustrated book called The Wonderful World of Nature. It’s a Reader’s Digest publication, and looks to be rather fascinating. Heaven knows when I’ll get time to read it.

Here’s why: I realised recently that my letters to Francisco were all the same, rather dull, and surmised that I was trying to write to someone whose background I know nothing about. So I made a decision to alter this state of affairs, and set off to my local library to see what I could see. They had next to nothing! I went to the other local library. Ditto. I went to the library in the West End. Ditto. The next day I went back to the first library and discovered that in spite of appearances they were actually the London library that specialised in collecting books on Asia! But they have them hidden away, and you have to ask. There are about fifty on Korea, so I have some reading ahead! Actually, many of them are accounts of the war, and many of these no doubt will cover pretty much the same sort of material. However, I started off with one that gave a general background ˗ the sort of book we used to use at school for Social Affairs (was it?) ˗ and then went on to one written by a social worker, and have now just started one which gives a good number of legends, fairy tales, fables, etc. It seems that the London libraries each specialise in some subject: and I had to go down to Kensington to get a book on the language of Korea.

About the middle book of those mentioned above. It’s called The Never-ending Flower (most books on Korea are called The Land of the Morning Calm) and is by a woman called Susie Younger. She is a Catholic convert, and has been in Korea for nine years as a social worker, living as a Korean in fact. She is absolutely charming, and is as remarkable a woman in her own way as all the other people she calls remarkable in her book. I have got more information from her on the differences and similarities that exist than from the straightforward text books, naturally, and I will go more

[second aerogramme]

quickly through the book again before I take it back, in order to refamiliarize myself with the details of life and living in Korea and amongst the families.

At the end of the book she has a little chapter dealing with herself, as an answer to those who wonder why she remains (a) single, and (b) in Korea. It also gives a little of her history as far as becoming a convert is concerned. While the actual groping towards the light of final conversion is, or was, a fairly lengthy process, the actual awakening of the truths in her was quite a sudden, casual thing. Something that could not have been foreseen, and therefore all the more obviously the work of his Lordship above. I’m mentioning all this, just to bring up again the subject of my own conversion, so to speak. Not that I haven’t been a sort of Catholic for years, as you know, but it’s only since the H business, where I was forced to state my case either for yea or nay, and even more from a follow-up when they held Forty Hours at the parish church, and when I managed to spend, for the first time with ease, an hour each day just meditating (for want of a better word) and also starting to understand, via that marvellously human priest-writer, Father Quoist, just what it is to be a Christian, but more particularly, a Catholic, that I’ve felt I know where I’m going ultimately. I can’t say I much like the look of the road, and it seems a hell of a ˗ or perhaps a heaven ˗ of a long way to go (!), and 99% of me objects to the trip entirely, but at least the other one percent has said that the idea is rather more worthwhile than I would have said a short while ago. This is all a bit vague, and I could do with Susie Younger’s gift of putting it down with proper humour, and better clarity. I’m a bit like one of those faith-healed people who shout “I’ve got religion!’ I know I have more than for any other reason because the ‘it’ helped me through that dreadfully dark patch that came in the wake of the recent chaos, and which is still helping me to push on when part of my mind says, ‘forget all this faith gunge and go back to your girl ˗ why put more trust in something you can’t hold in your hand?’  

In spite of what I’ve said about the help I know I’m receiving, I feel more alone than ever sometimes. Can you understand this sort of rather paradoxical situation? And yet having said that, perhaps I only now realise how really truly alone I was before, and how much more happy and inner-cleansed (!) I feel now when something turns up where I can try and help. Since I opened up my thoughts to David about H that time, we’ve been much closer, and often have long chats and discussions about things and ideas I’ve never talked about with anyone before. We are all the same, yet how remarkably different we all are! We all go through the same process, yet what infinite graduations [gradations, maybe] mould us into the strange, crazy beings we are. And yet in spite of the continual presence of the Good Lord, (and also my guardian angel ˗ I’d carefully forgotten about him for some time) I find it very easy to sink deep into despair when I don’t seem to overcome faults (when I don’t even seem to want to!) and desperately want to cry out for the helping hand that I need to hold to get me through. Still I think perhaps it’s better to be that much more alive than to be vegetating, soul-wise, as I was before.

You didn’t know you’d raised a lunatic; though you must have guessed it by now from all the ravings above. Not to worry, I’ve discovered in the last few weeks just how unbelievably understanding mothers are too!

I’m now about to change the subject entirely, so you can start to relax again. This last week has been rather hectic as it’s been the end of the term for the Opera Centre, and I managed to get to see both their shows as well as going to The Rake’s Progress at the Wells on Thursday night. This is an opera by Stravinsky ˗ set to an English text, and has some very funny moments, and some very tender ones and some very tense ones, and finally some very movingly sad ones. In short all the sorts of things that the best story-tellers have been using since time immemorial. And the music is some of the most melodic and rhythmic that Stravinsky has written. The Wells do it very well too ˗ it happens by chance to be very much associated with them rather than with an American company as one might expect since it was written over there. (But first performed in Italy, incredibly!)

The first of the Centre’s pieces is a rather bitsy affair called The Carmelites [Dialogues of the Carmelites] with, to quote David, some rather curious theology, and which finishes with the guillotining of about a dozen nuns, just off-stage. Not a very good piece really, though with many fine moments, and here with a well performed production. The other was a double bill of The Telephone (again!) [again, because I’d worked on this with the Dunedin Opera Company, and it had been done by the Centre as well], quite well done, and Malcolm Williamson’s four or five-year-old piece English Eccentrics, as a sort of vaudeville of 18th century eccentrics, gathered together to comment on each other and to perform their sad and mad little histories. This is by far the best thing I’ve seen the Centre do, though perhaps not having been in on it has biased me somewhat. But it was certainly a very fine production excellently performed. Love Mike. 

5.2.69 - a bit of unnecessary gloom and doom

5.2.69

Dear Mum, I’m writing this in a time of some depression, so I’m afraid it may be all a bit miserable as far as reading goes. Perhaps you should throw it away now. The so-called results of the auditions have out ˗ with a letter to each of the three reps from the Centre who went in for it running thus: (after thanking us for playing) The Panel was interested to hear your performance, but felt that more time is needed to decide on the question of a pianist. Probably we shall ask you to re-audition within a month. [I think I'd always fallen comfortably into jobs in New Zealand, and assumed it would be the same in the UK.]

I ask you, what sort of a letter is that? John, whom I’m flatting with now, and who is in the know as to what goes on in the Centre ˗ he’s ‘assistant House Manager,’ whatever that is ˗ had already told me that this was what they were going to say to us, but I sort of wasn’t concerned. Tonight however when he bought the letter home with him, I ceased to be annoyed about the whole thing, and just became depressed. John let it drop that they seem to think that the standard at the C. isn’t as high as last year, and I feel that once again I’m not sure if I’m good enough. I keep telling myself that I am, and this keeps me going for a while, but then I know deep down that there is just so much I don’t know, and just so much that I don’t seem to be able to do with the ease that I should, that I wonder if I’m really cut out for it. But if I’m not cut out for this what am I to do? So once again, I lay the story in your lap, and know that you’ll write back and say, that of course I’m capable of doing it, but in this I’m afraid that your word isn’t sufficient! I’m glad to hear you say so, of course, but this doesn’t seem to help to make me the better musician that I should already be, and don’t seem to be getting. Oh, I know I’ve improved in some ways since I’ve been here, but the others have probably done the same, and are still just as far ahead.

You know, the Good Lord makes it a bit tough just landing us in this earth with scarcely any guide rules about how we are to cope with practical living: I mean like knowing that we have a certain talent but not knowing whether it’s sufficient to carry us through. Or to put it another way, to feel that the work we enjoy isn’t necessarily going to be the work we can do for a living. I know that He’s got his eye on us, and has obviously kept His eye on me since I’ve been here. In some ways I’ve never been so well looked after; but to have a talent that is halfway between being good or bad is very difficult. It’s the problem of coping with a mind that isn’t prepared to do ordinary office-work, or some such, because I just don’t have ambition in that respect, and yet this self-same mind has to cope with knowing that it’s possibly not good enough to do what it really wishes to do. I’ll keep on praying, and hope that He sees fit to let me know what he has in store and wants me to do. [This argument about the level of talent has continued long past my time in the UK ˗ what I didn’t realise at that time was that I wasn’t putting enough work into practice, into improving in the areas that I wasn’t so good at, and into learning how to do the things I couldn’t do. That would all have helped in some measure at least. And while I don’t believe the saying that the Good Lord helps those who help themselves, he still does expect us to put the work in to make our talent usable!]

Let’s get off the dreary subject of tomorrow, and have a look at something I know a bit about! I got me first letter at me new address today, forwarded from Plaistow, (tho’ left upstairs, at 23) so I feel as tho’ I’m beginning to belong here now. John and I get on very well ˗ whereas Kingsley barely said a word most of the time he was at no 13, John talks nonstop! It’s a refreshing change, and he is generally interesting. Julie is a nice wee soul, short and with long blonde hair, and fairly quiet ˗ as much as any girl ever is, I suppose! [Oh, so unbelievably patronising!]

Glad to see you enjoyed your little holiday, and are being looked after. This place is still a bit shambolic ˗ tho’ we had plates, saucers and cups, and basic cutlery, with a couple of pots, and a pan thrown in, we keep finding things that we need that we haven’t got. [Think this sentence must be an example of my Irish heritage.] And that were supplied at Plaistow. Never mind, we’re surviving, and I daresay we will continue to do so. (Just as an afterthought to my above unpleasant topic, wouldn’t it be nice if we could say to the Good Lord when we felt like it, Look, Lord, I think I’ve been down here long enough, how about finishing off this only occasionally pleasant life down here?  It’s probably just as well we can’t. [I bet my mother thought so too; such a jaundiced view of life from an inexperienced 23-year-old.]

Since I last wrote I’ve also met the other boy that was originally to come in here with the present other two. He’s a talker too, and funnily enough seemed to want to put me, particularly, off Julie. (Apparently his mother has been ill, mentally, of late which was the reason for his not coming in, but John also keeps talking about his having gone off to Paris ˗ he must have been there a very short time, that’s all I can say.) It’s all very confusing, and I only hope it’s not going to get awkward. Anyway, this other boy, also a John, came in the other night, and the way he carried on when Julie was here was just annoying to say the least. John Gray, seemed quite annoyed too and I think has second thoughts about any changes that might have been planned. I don’t know how it was all to work, but it seems this other John was to move in when Julie moved out, but just how Julie was to go I don’t know! Anyway, it seems to both John and me, that things are satisfactory enough as they are, and we present three are getting on quite well. Anyway strictly speaking this other John could do nothing about it, as John G. and I are the people who’ve signed the agreement for the place (for six months) and he hasn’t so...?

I think I’ll cope financially, in fact, I’m sure I will, and John has already given me some lifts back and forth from the Opera C. And funnily enough, it’s actually quicker to go from Charing Cross to Blackheath by British Railways, than it used to be to go from C. Cross to Plaistow by tube! And it costs the same. So though it seems as though I’m further out of London, I don’t know that I actually am. Greenwich Observatory is just near ˗ in walking distance, and so is the Thames, and the Cutty Sark and some other important boats are moored in dry dock on the way we go to work. Quite an old.

interesting area really. Blackheath Village is in a little valley ˗ we’re on one side of the hill; and the Catholic Church is 5 minutes away ˗ and

So ˗ that’s the present situation. Anyway, LOTS of LOVE Mike

P.S. Our Master Classes don’t end till Friday week ˗ very short rehearsal time. 

3rd letter 6.9.68

6^th Sept 68. OVC.  

Dear mum, to continue with things as from where I left off last time.  On Wednesday I met Mike in town, about 1.30, and he gave me the fabulous news, for him, that he had a job as Chief Press Officer for United Artists, in London.  He’d been ringing up all day Tuesday as we’d trailed around London, and he found out that morning.  Apparently he could have started in a fortnight, but he’d already planned to go hitch-hiking on the Continent, for a month, and so told them that he’d have to give a month’s notice at his present position – which in actual fact he doesn’t have.  [A not uncommon approach to negotiation from Mike.]

So once more we wandered around L., not really seeing very much this time, but gave me a better idea of where I was going, and what fits in with what.  Then we caught a tube, in the rush hour, which is nowhere near as frightening as I’d been led to believe, and went out to Arnos Grove Station, where we were to walk to Anne and Pat’s.  However they were on the same train, they’d taken the neighbour’s two kids to Battersea Park, and they were both looking a bit had it.   As we walked to their place, Anne told me all about an operation she’d had to have since she’d arrived – some infection that had grown to something very nasty – she’d caught it coming over  - and the first doctor she went to reckoned she was just neurotic! However she’s better now, although she can’t start teaching again on Monday, as she should have.

Well, they gave us a very nice meal – they live in a fabulous place, really – board with a lady who’s hardly ever there, and it’s all done out in carpet and very comfortable – the luck of some people I said!  While there I rang Reg [my English uncle, whom I’d never met, and had only corresponded with – my father’s brother] and he was thrilled to hear from me, apparently, and immediately invited me out to dinner the next night!  He gave me very precise instructions how to get there, and we checked it through on one of the few things I’ve bought – an A to Z of London – about 260 pages of maps and indexes on London alone!  But it’s quite indispensable.  Only 3/6.  [I probably mentioned the price because I had to live on £500 the first year I was in London.]  And I also have a tube map.  Let me tell you about these tubes.  There are about seven lines, and another, the Victoria, is opening shortly, and by going down any subway, anywhere, you can eventually get to where you want.  You buy a ticket for your ultimate destination, and as far as I can see there is nothing to prevent you from staying underground all day, as long as you come up at the proper destination.  And even then some of the tickets have your starting point on them, and so I suppose you could actually come up where you liked, as long as it was within the amount on your ticket.  I have no intention of trying that but the system itself is absolutely foolproof, as long as you know where you want to go!  [My first memory of the Underground was descending the long escalator at Piccadilly - I think that was the station - and seeing the hordes of people.  That was only time the crowds surprised me, seemingly.]

The buses are considerably more complex, but they are well signposted, and the conductors are very helpful. I learnt this yesterday, when I decided it was time to start home-hunting! I had bought a Weekly Advertiser the day before but, since it took me so long to find out where each locality was, I thought it would be better to see an agent.  I thought I’d try the OVC one, although Mike and K. had told me that they’d only have Earls Court stuff, and they were right.  However, the man there suggested going to the London Accommodation Bureau in Oxford St, and said you can’t miss it, it’s right beside Woolworths.  Well, it took me an age to find WW, and the LAB is still missing.  By chance, however, I saw a place called 139 Flat Service (also in O. St) and went on up, thinking that even if it cost me a bit to pay them it would be worth it.  They put me onto two places – 3, actually, but in the end that person wasn’t home, or some such – and so I wended my way out to the [other two].  This is where my A to Z and tube map came into their own.  You’d think I’d been living in London all my life!

The Troxy Cinema, which became the London Opera Centre

The first place is in Plaistow, on the East side, but quite a way out.  This was its only disadvantage, as it had three rooms: kitch., living, twin bedroom, and sharing the bathroom with the landlord. And though the area is scungy down at the tube station, it gets prettier and altogether better as you get near it.  The other place was only a short bus ride from Commercial Rd [where the London Opera Centre was situated, the place I’d come to study at], but had no linen, a shilling bathroom (!), and some other bods wandering around too. As it happened I arrived at the same time as another bloke who’d been in 139 when I had!  But as he was working on the south side of the Thames, he didn’t think it would suit.  The little man who showed us around it had so many keys it took him several minutes to open each door, and he had the improbable name of Muskeran!  The other person, in Plaistow, Mrs Marshall, was much more pleasant, and what’s more pointed out the disadvantages!  So I didn’t know what to do – the second place was tempting by virtue of its closeness to the school, but the other was cheaper and more comfortable.  So in the end, I decided on the Plaistow place.  Only hope it’s as good as I thought.  [I was committed to finding a place to share with another student, Kingsley McLaren, who was studying at a different college. He arrived a bit later.]

The address is 13 NEWMAN ROAD, PLAISTOW, LONDON, E 13.  So I’ll shift out there tomorrow, and take some of the gear out tonight.  I can leave whatever I can’t manage here for a couple of days, I should think.  Have just realised that I didn’t tell you about going out to the school.  I caught a tube, and then walked along Comm. Rd, which since it’s in the East End, is very, very scungy.  It improves as you get to the school, but I wasn’t feeling too happy about living in the neighbourhood.  They were expecting me there anyway, although there wasn’t anybody of importance around, and they had a little envelope with stuff to read and fill in.  I’ve since sent them a cheque for £50, for the first term, and hope that I don’t have to pay the lot at once.  Thought it just might help the bank balance.  A secretary [June Megennis, the Administrator, rather than a secretary] who was there showed me around the place – it’s on the lines of the Mayfair [Theatre in Dunedin], an old picture theatre but much bigger.  Well, that was about all I did there and then wandered back to the City.  I’ll carry on in another letter. 

Love Mike.

[There's an intriguing bit of coincidence in my moving into a house with the number 13 - in E 13 as well.  This number has been fairly significant in my life: my birthday's on the 13th, I was married on the 13th...!]