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

28.1.70 - Troubles at the Crowls', and looking at my future

28.1.70

Dear Mum, here’s the rest of what I was going to say in yesterday’s letter, which you will no doubt have received by this time, and equally no doubt can probably barely read. On Monday, I went back up to the Crowls’ to give Reg a hand throughout the day at the Mentally Handicapped Centre, to do stocktaking of the Christmas stuff they had left. We spent a fairly calm but hard-working day doing this, and he took me to lunch at a place across the road about 1.00. Did I say that Nina is finally moving today, in my last letter? I don’t think so, but anyway this is the end result it would seem of nine years of not-very-happiness in the Crowl household.

I got most of the following at the lunch we had, and honestly I really feel very sorry for Reg. He’s a marvellous person and fabulously generous, and to have had this sort of tension in his house for the last nine years is pretty hard. In fact, up until this latest episode which has resulted in Nina’s going, I had never thought he looked old, or behaved like an old man, and it’s only now that he’s started to look tired and weary and a bit fed up. [He was sixty-four at this time.]  He’s even said he’s feeling old which isn’t like him at all. 

As I’ve said to you before I’ve always found Nina charming, so that it seems incredible that she has been in that house for the last two months and Not Spoken to Reg once! The only time I’ve ever come up against anything other than charm was at Westgate that time, when if Reg and Margaret and I went out and were relaxed about the time a bit [as in getting back for the all-important tea], we were told off not by Mavis, but by Nina. And on one or two other occasions I’ve dared to argue about something with her the surface Nina has gone and a much less pleasant lady has appeared. Reg puts it down to her having been spoilt all her life because of her heart trouble ˗ it would seem there is probably no reason why she shouldn’t have ever worked, but she never has. And while she hasn’t ever lived off anyone in particular, she’s nearly always lived with one of her sisters since her mother died. She has a pension but obviously this isn’t enough.

And Reg is worried too about Margaret who must obviously be left on her own some day. He says that Mavis’s sister Phil would look after her for a start at least, but it seems both to him and me that she must get used to not necessarily living with her relations. Margaret in fact is apparently quite happy with the idea of staying somewhere else ˗ boarding with someone for example ˗ but it is the relations, and especially Mavis who won’t hear of it. This seems very short-sighted to me. I said for a start to Reg that at least she had plenty of relations, but he was just sourly amused: Mavis’s brother and wife, who would be the most able to look after her, have carefully never bothered to look after Nina for more than some months when their mother died, although, Reg says, he promised his mother that he would. So it seems as if there is no likelihood of their doing anything about Margaret, either. What a business, isn’t it? The Good Lord will no doubt keep an eye on her, but as with any problem, he likes us, I’m sure, not just to sit around waiting for him to make a move. [After I returned to New Zealand, Margaret got married, in fact, to Brian, who also had some degree of mental disability. He died later, and Margaret seems to have coped since then, keeping in touch with some relatives on Mavis’s  side.]

Which brings me to me again! I went to a play last night (Edward II, with Ian McKellan, the new up and coming boy, it would seem, and it was very good too, even though I must have missed about the first twenty minutes!) and on the way home as I was doing my usual ten minute walk from the tube ˗ I do most of my meditating there!! ˗ I fell again on the problem of where I am going and what I am ultimately to do with myself. And honestly I must have been getting so worked up about it lately, that I finally burst into tears (!) and snuffled my way along quite a considerable bit of the road. That cleared the air at least, and I’m sure I felt a conciliatory pat on my shoulder from my much neglected Guardian Angel (I wonder what his name is? Fred, do you think?)

And at Mass this morning (that’s one of the advantages of going to work at night, I can go to Mass on both Wednesday and Saturday) I said to the Good Lord again to give me a push in the right direction, because I don’t know if I can be bothered with much more of this rather futureless outlook, and the idea has arisen in my head that it might be worth carrying on and completely my ATCL [Associate of the Trinity College of London, in piano], and possibly LTCL [Licentiate], and looking into teaching, because the more I look at it the more it seems to be clear that I’m just not good enough to take up repetiteuring full-time. I could get there in each case, but I’m not quick-witted enough, I think, to know what I’m doing without having worked at it. Therein has always lain my problem, I believe.

So I’m writing to Trinity College to find out if my Practical bit of the ATCL is still valid and if it is, or even if it isn’t, I think at least having that aim in view might be more valuable than carrying on as at the moment, hoping one day I’ll know when I’m ready enough!

One of Mike’s friends, Mervyn, that I met again last night when we three and Kathy went for a drink on Mike’s Irish citizenry, said something about teaching ˗ he teaches foreign students more advanced English ˗ and that is probably where the notion has arisen. What sort of teacher would I make? That doesn’t matter yet ˗ but I’ll see how this Trinity College business works out. I begin to think that I must always have sort of aim in view otherwise I don’t bother. We’ll see what gives from here, anyway.  Love, Mike.

[A good deal of this was a real loss of confidence after being regarded as something of a failure at the Opera Centre by the staff. I was actually a good sight-reader, and capable of working hard musically. I suspect if I’d pushed myself I could have made a living in London, musically, doing a variety of jobs, and in time would have had enough contacts to keep the work coming in. C’est la vie.]

18.1.70 - held up in the cinema, Catholicism and Topaz

18.1.70 [handwritten on two aerogrammes]

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

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

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

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

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

[second aerogramme]

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

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

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

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

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

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

30.12.69 - Morose post-Christmas feelings

Dated 30.1.69 but more likely 30.12.69 - handwritten over two aerogrammes.

Hullo, hullo, you won’t get this letter for another year, but never mind, any news that’s in it won’t be quite that old. I hope you had a fabulously happy Christmas, surrounded by lots of cheery relations ˗ that makes you sound a bit matriarchal, but I don’t quite mean it that way! I hope the post-Christmas period didn’t quite get you the way it got me ˗ I enjoyed myself thoroughly up until about 10.00 on Christmas night, and then a great feeling of depression crept over me (especially when I found I had to make a great Tube detour in order to get home from Mike’s) and has stayed with me, on and off, since then. I’m beginning to feel that I must be getting to be a neurotic or summat; I keep swinging from fits of bustling energy and effervescence to fits of torpor and turpitude (that is if there are two such words!). There are a great variety of reasons ˗ each counterbalanced by pointing to the fact that I oughtn’t to be depressed!

David’s been away for a fortnight so my usual ‘sounding-board’ is out ˗ but Cathy has been more friendly of late ˗ but Ian has been miserable, and plays the same Joan Baez record till the early hours while he tries to finish not the best painting he’s ever done ˗ and I revised a song the other day and thought it was now much more acceptable and it only seems just as wrong in a different way (oh, the problems of artists!!!) and they’ve brought in a new rule at work that means we have to fight and argue with half the people that go in and yet I’m getting on fabulously well with my co-workers, the boss Trevor, and Mike, his assistant from Jersey (he’s only about 25) ˗ but they are both leaving in a month ˗ and Margaret, one of the other cashiers ˗ the most delightfully crazy person I’ve ever met ˗ we have each other in hysterics within minutes, much to the bemusement of the customers ˗ and one of the ‘perks’ of the place is the ability to get in free at any West End Cinema; and I’ve felt homesick for NZ lately and yet find Londoners the most fascinating bunch of individuals I’ve ever come across ˗ in spite of the fact that 60% of them are very thick, and seem to have no initiative (and are the biggest pack of ‘fiddlers’, though on the most petty scale) ˗ the immense variety inherent in 12,000,000 people has to be seen to be believed. [My apologies to Londoners: this is the typically opinionated viewpoint from someone who likes to generalise!]

Mike and I went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve ˗ at the Brompton Oratory ˗ with a Mozart Mass performed (I couldn’t see the altar but we were right beside the singers and orchestra!) and the crowd of South West London trendy types and ‘fashionable’ Catholics (and nons) [non-Catholics, presumably] was out of this world. I then walked home afterwards ˗ London isn’t sufficiently go-ahead in its ideas to have transport after 12.30 [this from someone who’d grown up in a city where such late night transport still doesn’t exist] ˗ and because everyone else was picking off the taxis as I hailed them ˗ well, would you believe...? ˗ I walked about four miles and was within two minutes of home (by taxi) when I finally got one. And my feet were wet through! But Mike and I had spent the evening talking more than usual but about all we got out of it is the fact that we don’t either of us seem to be getting anywhere or

[second aerogramme]

have any particular viewpoint in view. Reg was saying to me that it’s great, he thinks, that people don’t have to settle into a job when they’re young as his generation did, but there is the other side of the coin, in that, because it’s so easy to get work, one tends not to bother to settle into anything, and to waffle around. Life always seems to be too short, at twenty-four!!

Again, I’d like to see a lot of things, in Europe, etc, but I’d also quite happily be married ˗ and unless I find a very accommodating wife, the combination of the two would be difficult. I always seem to be harping on this marriage thing, don’t I, but it seems to be very much on my mind of late. But of course, as you no doubt understand, it’s a hangover from the H. business ˗ one doesn’t value a thing until one loses it. I don’t suppose I need explain this much, to you ˗ that’s another fault of youth ˗ we can’t get it into our thick heads that other people have the same sort of feelings and experiences! So the end result of this long misery, is that I’m just a mixed-up kid!!

And there’s this usual fluctuation about the music angle. Whether it’s worthwhile carrying on with it or whether I’d be better to go off as a hobo for the next few years, and settle down to a nice quiet (ugh! I’m sorry) office job! I’m afraid I’ve got the troublesome spirit in me that seems to have caused Dad all his bother ˗ an unhealthy mixture of adventure and security ingrained in my bones. Not only unhealthy, but fairly irreconcilable. You’ve got it, too, haven’t you ˗ though the security side of it seems to have got the upper hand ˗ the only present sign of the other is your inclination to manage to live on a much smaller bank account than you ought to have at your age ˗ and to give away any little excess you may have to your next-to-useless son.

I sometimes think it’s better to have no brains at all (I mean me, not you!!) ˗ then you have considerably less worries because all your interest in life is pared down to basic essentials. Want a set of brains? ˗ they don’t seem to be much good to me ˗ what’s the use of a feverish quest for knowledge? You only find a whole new vista of unanswered questions before you and the effort of taking stands upon certain points of view is incredibly wearying. No wonder ‘Humanists’ think Catholics are wrong ˗ to them the Catholic way of living seems to go counter to every type of desire there is, and there’s nothing like a Humanist for giving into the present desire. What the consequence is, is no doubt unimportant...

I had a lovely Christmas day ˗ apart from the fact that Mike gave me Verse and Worse for a present!! (he gave me a book I already had for my birthday too!) ˗ but half a dozen of us went to Mike’s flat, and it was warm and convivial and jovial and quite Dickensian and delightful. And yet of the present too. One of the girls had her two year old son there ˗ the most affectionate child I’ve ever struck (no, I didn’t!) [strike the child, I presume I mean: weak attempt at humour]. The three bachelors there, (self included) all became quite fatherly. The boy’s father is no longer within ken ˗ as far as I could make out ˗ not dead, but no longer with us! It wasn’t necessarily better than last year’s Christmas, just much more relaxed: five New Zealanders, and an Aussie ˗ what could you expect??  Love, Mike. 

23.12.69 - clothes, Christmas shopping and Ben-Hur in 70mm

23.12.69

Dear Mum, just a note to let you know all your recent parcels and letters have arrived safely, and to let you know as well that I now realise why I am a less than thrifty person. I’ve obviously inherited it from you. Fancy sending so much money! Next time I hear from you the address will no doubt be The Poorhouse. I was sort of thinking in terms of maybe two or three quid with which, as I said, I could buy a book. With this lot I’ll be able to start a library! No, actually, as you say, I’ll get me some clothes. I was thinking of a suit, but I really think some sort of sports clothes would be better. A coat and pants anyway. I seem to have a fair few shirts, and other odds and ends. My present pair of pants are wearing very well, though naturally the pockets aren’t too happy.

Did I ever tell you I’d altered the crease on them? They used to drive me mad, because when the tailors had altered them originally the leg crease went towards the centre making me look as though I was bandy-legged! You can barely see the original crease now, and my own creasing is ‘permanent’ apparently.

The other blue trousers I brought with me just don’t fit anymore ˗ I lost so much pudding round the middle that they won’t stay up. Anyway, they are going very thin at the knees. Do you remember the pair I bought just before I came away? They were very trendy (!) and had flared leg-bottoms (?) They seem too long actually, so one of these days I’ll take them up an inch or two and they’ll look quite normal. I’ve also got thin enough for them to look ‘decent’ as well, though all your young men here wear hip-fitting trousers. (They’re a bit of a curse, really; you can’t get your hands into the pockets, let alone carry anything in them. It looks as though you’re malformed!)

My sports coat is lasting well, of course, but the right sleeve cuff has worn away entirely and is a bit of an embarrassment. I don’t quite know what to do to repair it. Any suggestions?

The fudge, by the way, arrived some time ago, did I say?, and has gone the way of all your superb fudge ˗ and not even all into my mouth either.

As usual I left all my Christmas shopping till the last ˗ and on Saturday went along Oxford St to see what I could see. (Nothing but the best for Crowl’s recipients.) But in spite of the most wide selection of stuff imaginable it was very difficult to decide what to get, and I finished up with nothing. However, yesterday (Monday) I set out again with firmer intentions and more idea ˗ I’d had no clue as to what I would get anyone on Saturday ˗ and wound up with a pair of cups for Reg and Mavis (glass cups with copper holders; I’d wanted something copper for them ˗ and they already have everything!), a modern type of brooch for Margaret, and an Indian scarf for Nina. I was originally going to get Margaret the scarf, and to get some serviette rings for R and M (they use them all the time) but my plans got changed as I went along. I got Mike a record, as I’m going to his place for dinner, and Kathy (Tither) I’m going to give a copy of Zorba the Greek that Marilyn sent me ˗ after I’d bought my own. Or does that seem mean? But I don’t see the point of it hanging around doing nothing.

The amount of jewellery that is around is incredible. Lots of it is very cheap (well, above a pound, but under three) and very individual and very attractive. The trendy people these days are wearing about three rings on each hand (!) and so the variety is enormous. And they do such interesting things to make jewellery. I saw one shop where they had butterfly wings (an incredibly vivid blue) encased in gold surrounds, and another shop where sea plants had been enamelled and coppered, etc. And the variety of colour of jewels, whatever they are, is dazzling. Of course if you’re well off, in London, and like lots of ‘trinkets’, you can have a fabulous time. I have a fabulous time, just shop-window-gazing.

In Burlington Arcade, for example, or in White’s (?) Galleries (an old cinema, I think, now filled with tiny one room shops) [I can't identify this place.]. The pendant I sent you (and which I hope arrived), is a goldstone ˗ from Indonesia, I think the girl said. It’s about as small as pendants come just now ˗ I’m presuming your taste hasn’t altered that much ˗ because the average one is three or four times as large, clustered around with trimmings, and even with little bells in some cases.

I actually quite enjoy Christmas shopping ˗ it isn’t only the wares that are varied; the people are an incredibly fascinating mixture, and just as interesting. And I like wrapping up things too ˗ though last year was a bit of a mess, and not the most pleasant Christmas I’ve ever spent.

Margaret’s brooch is the shape of a flat orange-quarter, with an enamel content, but with an abstract painting on it, somehow varnished in. Sounds a bit weird, but it’s rather attractive. I thought of lots of things I could get the Crowls, but they wouldn’t go with their house. I found an old typewriter ribbon case for the brooch and padded it out with tissue paper left over my cold! I must have picked up some of the Hannagan ingenuity after all.

Since I started this letter I’ve made 30/-; Pete Lyon rang me up the other day to get me to do some coaching, today. And I went to a trade showing of Ben-Hur (back, in 70mm) on Sunday (!) morning with Trevor Neilsen from work [he was the Australian manager I’d mentioned previously]; I found a lot of it quite moving, though I hadn’t remembered enjoying it much the first time. It’s still very much a Hollywood piece and a lot of it is a bit rubbishy. The 70mm process is often disconcerting: hills sloping off at the side of the film turn out not to be hills, and the sea bends! Ships coming at each other in one scene from the sides of the shot are coming uphill at each other!!

Love Mike, and Happy New Year!

16.9.69 - The Trojans

16.9.69

Dear Mum, What a life! I’ve just spent the whole weekend working, and then spent all day yesterday rushing from A to B and back again. One of the other cashiers had flu apparently so I was working from 11.00 or so on Saturday until much the same hour at night, and then again all day Sunday, from 2.00 till about 10.30. However, at least the money has been balancing out, since I’ve been doing it on my own, so that seems to point to the fact that it isn’t necessarily my mistake when the money is out.

I didn’t have to work yesterday at all, though they were contemplating it at one stage (!!!) and so David and I went to the full rehearsal of The Trojans which lasted from 10.30 in the morning until 5.15! But that was with about an hour and a half off and quite a number of unnecessary breaks. What a fantastic piece it is: it lasts about four and something hours in performance, without counting the intervals, and there are barely any spots of tedium at all. I can’t type for sour nuts this morning ˗ everything is going up the wop.

It’s in two parts really; the first concerns the acceptance into Troy of the Trojan horse, and shows how Cassandra was able to foresee it all happening and no one would pay any attention to her. It also introduces us to a whole host of characters in a big court scene, but very few of them have anything much to do except comment on the death of Laocoön, who has just been eaten up by a snake that came out of the sea. Aeneas is the most important character apart from Cassandra, and he and a few others escape (Cassandra and most of the Trojan women commit suicide rather than be captured) and make their way into the second part of the opera which is about the Trojans in Carthage where Dido reigns as Queen, and this section concerns the love story of Dido and Aeneas and her suicide when he goes off to Rome. (I think!)

It’s an epic piece and near enough needs the time it takes to tell ˗ in fact one would be very upset to lose anything much, it’s all so original. The opening has a long scene between Cassandra and her boyfriend, Chorebus (he is killed off stage somewhere later on) which is very dramatic, then we get the court scene where they describe the snake bit ˗ Aeneas sees it just prior to the opening of the scene; before this there is a bit done in pantomime where Andromache and her little boy enter in mourning (for whom?) while the chorus of people comment very dispiritedly: they dislike having sad things happening, but this is only the beginning of a long lot of tragedy. This court scene was designed in golds and blacks; very starkly brilliant. The people go off and discover the Trojan horse, and bring it on stage to much rejoicing: only momentarily thinking there may be something strange about it when a slight clatter of armour is heard from inside!

The next scene shows Aeneas asleep in his tent; and during a long introduction we hear the approach of Hector’s ghost ˗ he has come to rouse Aeneas up to battle; and the sudden shock in the orchestra when he does wake him is quite frightening! The last scene shows the Cassandra suicide. All this part of the opera is done in very dark colouring and dismal lighting. In the next part, colour abounds. (By this time I was sitting in one of the boxes with Alistair and we could see all the detail.) Dido first greets Aeneas on his arrival, and then promptly the latter saves the Carthaginians from being overtaken by the Nubians (I think!). Slowly we see these two fall in love, especially in a long gorgeous and yet very simple duet, that was done yesterday in the most fabulous way.

Aeneas goes off in the next scene and Dido commits suicide in the last in a very moving death scene. I really need about a dozen newsletters to tell you all about it and the wealth of detail, but suffice to say I think it will be one of the greatest successes that the Garden has ever had.

After this I rushed home because Mike had given me two tickets for The Battle of Britain premiere and as I didn’t have any clothes because I hadn’t been able to get to the laundrette when I should have over the weekend, I intended to go round then and wash myself something. I knew Hazel was also going to the film but was to be sitting a different seat[ing area]. I didn’t have anyone else to go with so I rang her and she said she’d come and sit with me, but then told me that I didn’t have nearly as much time as I expected. I went to the laundrette anyway, and found that I wasn’t going to have much time to dry the clothes so thought I’d just dry what I needed. Just as I was about to do so a woman stepped in and pinched the dryer! So I went back to the flat intending to iron the clothes I needed, dry, but this wouldn’t work either; so I borrowed a pair of David’s sox, and ironed my tattiest shirt, and set out with these and my dinner jacket. [My ‘dinner jacket’? I don’t remember ever having one of these!] I’d missed the train, then couldn’t get a bus, then couldn’t get a tube, then another connecting tube, then found I didn’t have a handkerchief and a cut on my face from shaving started to bleed!! AAAgh! What a night. The film turned out to be singularly dull, and isn’t worth seeing at all. In spite of its cast and fairly spectacular battle scenes. Douglas Bader went up the stairs while I was standing in the foyer with Hazel and we saw Kenneth More about two foot away afterwards. But otherwise it was a drag and not a good full stop to The Trojans! Love, Mike

Sept 1969 - filming for TV in Edinburgh

30.9.69

Dear Mum, just got your letter in which you mention your many history-making exploits. I hope while you’re concentrating on making history that you’re also concentrating on getting well. I don’t know if you will still be in there when you get this ˗ I’ll send it to the hospital anyway, and put a wee note on it where to send it if you’ve gone home by this time. Glad to hear however that as usual you’re enjoying yourself thoroughly, though I do think it’s about time they found someone else to pick on for their experiments ˗ they always seem to find you such an interesting case, don’t they? Wonder why you’ve been given so many little peculiarities? Glad to see also that everyone is looking after you so well; funny, isn’t it, how both you and I seem to be considered quite helpless and everyone seems to rush to help. I often have dear old ladies helping me to buy things in shops, and others seem to find a good old sounding board in me for all their troubles. I know more about complete strangers’ troubles than anybody else’s! It’s nice also that you’re in hospital in the Spring;  you’ll be able to see all the trees and flowers coming out into bloom from your own private window.

We’ve had our first touch of Winter today; I was staying overnight at Mike’s (it was his birthday yesterday, and he invited me around for a meal ˗ and very nice it was too, and we just spent a very quiet evening sounding like two under-under-graduates according to Lindsay!) and when I went last night it was quite pleasant and mild, and I only had a jacket on over my shirt. This morning however there was a distinct chill in the air ˗ even though the sun is still shining quite pleasantly, and it looks very pleasant as long as you’re indoors, but I was feeling a little like a slightly refrigerated person by the time I got home.

I don’t think I told you any more about Edinburgh, did it? (I’ve written to Hazel who is away at the moment, and I think it was her that I told the rest of the story to.) Anyway on Wednesday morning when we were supposed to work solidly for about three and a half hours we arrived and rehearsed (after about half an hour’s wait) with the cameras, and then went and sat about and then were made up and then sat about, and then filmed it quite casually in about ten minutes! And it was apparently so right (a piece of commentary had to be fitted over the last part of our performance and it was so well timed that it ended exactly as we did!) that we didn’t even have to do it again, which they’d expected to. I think they felt they wouldn’t get it right again if they did do it.

So we finished quite early in the day, and after we had a huge salad each in a place that Ande Anderson (the producer) knows, we went our separate ways, and I wandered off to see some more of the place that I hadn’t yet taken in. I wandered around the East end of the town, I think, and this brought me to Holyrood House [Palace] eventually, which I investigated. Unfortunately they didn’t really show very much of it to us ˗ only about one floor, out of three or four, and not all of that I suspect. Still it was interesting, though like many other things it no longer exists as it did when it was first built, and only parts of rooms are as old as the entire establishment. A ceiling here, a or a door here, or a staircase here. Still the room where Mary Queen of Scots was having dinner with a couple of friends the night her secretary Rizzio was murdered about two rooms away is there, and the spot where he was left dying ˗ though the little private dining room (about as big as our kitchen!) has a telephone in it these days! And the bed her husband slept in is still sitting in his room, made up, as though he were just away in England for the day.

There are lots of fascinating little curiosities, and even more that we couldn’t see, I think ˗ you seem to have to go around with one of the guides who only shows you what they think is necessary. Though they are fairly knowledgeable about the place, and conversation with them is rather more fascinating than actually listening to the talk, which leaves dozens of little details out.

The setting for the House (like that of the Castle, which had about the magnificent setting possible on top of a sheer rock) is fabulous. It’s at the other end of the Royal Mile ˗ walk straight up the road and you eventually come to the Castle gates ˗ and is sort of the end of the world; all at the back of it is a great roll of hills, with a huge scar down the side of the closest. I first saw the House from above, in the sort of park area (Calton Hill ˗ correct spelling incidentally) which is full of overpowering monuments to long forgotten leaders of the town, and up there you can really see the setting. Everything is heavily built in Edinburgh; one imagines it would take an atom bomb just to shake the foundations let alone knock it down.

Since I got back I’ve had to work all the four remaining days of the week; Thursday through to Sunday, morning noon and night. I was nearly up the wall at the end of it. Fortunately I’ve had two full days off to compensate. Still, as employers they’re fairly good, in that I only seem to need to ask for a certain time off and they say, Oh, I think that can be arranged!

Lots of love and keep progressing!

9.6.69 Hampton Court and Brighton Beach

9.6.69

Dear Mum, sorry it’s rather a while since I’ve written ˗ in fact I have been getting slack, I’m afraid, on my letter writing in general. I got an answer back from Prof Platt thanking me for writing, but it was a very short letter ˗ about ten lines, I think ˗ he wanted to know because he says Murray Holmes is thinking of coming over ˗ I don’t know what he intends doing over here, though. [Nor do I now remember who this man was.]

We’ve been having fabulous weather here over the last weekend, and it’s still fine in fact ˗ temperatures up in the 70s.

On Sat I went with Mike to Weybridge which is near Hampton Court, for lunch with one of his girlfriends ˗ her name is Maureen, but for some reason she’s called Mickey! Weybridge is quite a way from London Central ˗ about forty minutes by not very fast train (they have fast trains which take you direct, and semi-fast ones that stop at some stations, and not very fast ones which stop occasionally, and slow ones which take all day to get there) and is one of the wealthy areas, like Blackheath, with a pretence at being in the country ˗ though Weybridge succeeds rather more than Blackheath does. Anyway, after lunch we went to Hampton Court and spent some time there, and though the place has certain fascinations, it isn’t as interesting as some other spots. It has the distinction of having no two chimneys alike ˗ they each have a different pattern, and there are dozens of chimneys ˗ and of housing lots of grace and favour people ˗ ones who live in royal apartments (there are some in London too), rent free, because of some royal relationship or service. But it isn’t very looked after generally speaking ˗ certainly not inside in the royal apartments where the furniture just looks patchy instead of antique, and where they have some of the dreariest paintings I’ve ever seen. Plus the fact that there is so much you can’t see there that it gets a little frustrating after a while running constantly into No Admittance signs.

We went in the Maze, which is in a rather bad way ˗ people have rather wrecked it at various times by trampling through the hedges, and now most of the hedges have iron fences in their centres which rather spoils the attractiveness. But it’s not a bad maze ˗ everyone goes around with silly grins on their faces ˗ there are several dead end paths, and no one coming out of one tells the people going into it that it is a dead end. There are some very nice formal gardens there ˗ one with tiny hedges about six inches high all in designs with flowers between ˗ but only ones that aren’t going to grow higher than the hedges. And others with statues and fountains in them.

The building is rather fabulous ˗ especially the old Tudor bits which they are gradually restoring to something of their former beauty, and they are also restoring the massive murals ˗ some walls are nothing but paintings, and the ceilings too. They have cleaned these up and they look very bright. One room is full of weapons, but all arranged in geometrical designs and hung on the walls, so that a hundred pistols in a circle cease to have their warfaring value and become something of beauty.

After the Court we went down to Kevin’s pub ˗ about 500 yards from the Palace gates, and sat there for quite a while talking.  It is actually quite an old building, but what looks like age inside it is apparently phoney, and it was decorated in an old style just a few years ago! [This wasn’t a pub that Kevin Flaherty owned, but one he worked in for a time.] After this we we went and had a very nice Chinese meal, and then finally went home. [This obviously wasn’t the time I had an Indian meal that nearly burnt my mouth out; something I thought happened near Hampton Court.]

Brighton Beach, about 1967
by Tony Ray-Jones

Yesterday about eight of us from the Centre went to Brighton, and it turned out to be the hottest day this year. Well, we lay on the beach (and swam, twice, in extremely cold, but very buoyant water) for something like four hours, and naturally we all look rather more than pink today. I knew I was getting more burnt than I ought, but it was just so wonderful to be in actual sunshine that actually lasted for more than an hour that I couldn’t resist it. Fortunately I didn’t get burnt as much as that time the kids and I went to St Kilda [in Dunedin; I’m not sure what kids I’m referring to. Possibly my cousins.] ˗ remember? ˗ we all came home looking like fresh beetroots and could barely get dressed or sleep or anything. I slept very well last night, just by ignoring the discomforts I did feel, and except for my legs (the backs of them of course!) and back, which are both rather tender, particularly when I’m sitting, I’m not too bad. But what a day! It made life worthwhile and I even felt like swimming, which surprised me as I don’t normally like sea water. But there were barely any waves, and it was nowhere (that I went in) very deep. But the beach was PEBBLES! and the area between the ball and heel of both my feet have great blue bruises on them ˗ it was impossible to walk comfortably ˗ though at least there was only sand under the water.

I’m going to have to leave this flat ˗ John has now decided that he needs a flat in North London, because we’re too far away from his Royal College. Actually I don’t mind (apart from having felt quite settled here) because it gives me an excuse to part with him and it seems as though I may be able to go into a flat with Davids Syrus and Gorringe ˗ who both have to move shortly. And anyway, North London is more central ˗ especially if you’ve missed a train late at night. Strange isn’t it that Jeff and I get on well together, and that we both find John rather difficult to get on with. [handwritten] Jeff and I, for example, have just been for a long walk around Blackheath, which is something John always reckoned he’d do, but never would. John always considers himself to be an intellectual ˗ with the inference that we’re not ˗ you know? Not to worry, love, Mike. 

7.1.69 First letter of 1969

7.1.69

Hullo, is this the first letter I’ve written you in the New Year?  Happy New Year anyway.  There seemed to be a bit of delay in mail here and I’ve only just (a day or two ago) received a letter you wrote on Boxing Day.  I think I’ve had everything you’ve sent from Fr Deslandes; not quite sure but I think I’ve two.  And they arrived without extra charges or anything.  [Father Deslandes, as I recall, ran the orphanages for South Korean orphans.  My mother and I each sponsored one of these boys for some years.]

 

Both Margaret and Mavis’s birthdays are in December!  Mavis’s was on one Saturday that I was up there and I think you’ll find a reference to it not so long ago in a letter, but I can’t remember the actual date, and Margaret’s is just a short while before Christmas – but again I’m not sure of the date – perhaps I can find out – plenty of time anyway!  Do you think I should have at least sent a card or someut?  It’s a bit late now of course.

 

Got me $10 without any great fuss , except that the gits at this end had sent the copy where I could then collect the money to a Post Office way around up the main street, instead of sending it to the Main Post Office, which is two minutes walk from the house!  It’s a little branch in the back of a Chemist’s shop.  There are almost as many Post Offices here as pubs – four branches within close walking distance!  And guess what else turned up – I was riding along in the bus just last week from the Opera Centre, a way I’ve come dozens of times and the bus passed a little notice on the wall saying: Change Alley!  It was where it should have been, but is too small to be in the A to Z.  I was on my way into the Strand but decided to come back later and have a proper look.  I did (and incidentally discovered that I’d never walked along Fleet St before in the process) about 10.30 at night and went in and had a look at it – at considerable risk to my life and limbs if any mugger had seen me no doubt!  In Change Alley there are now the back entrances to the St Martin’s Bank  and Lloyds Bank and one or two subsidiary buildings’ rear ends, but no Frobshm and Whoojy.   Sorry, they just don’t appear to exist anymore. 

 

Got some Tablets today – with all the guff inside them.  Thank you.  Also the 2 bob bit! 

 

Well since I last wrote what’s happened?  On Tuesday, New Year’s Eve, I went up to Ann and Trish’s for a meal, and to go to a party with them. They had been carol singing with some Anglican group, and the people at the party were from this – but not a very friendly mob.  I talked to the same guy nearly all night, and one or two others.  The majority of them left us alone – the 2 girls, Anne’s sister Marie and self – until after we came back from Trafalgar Square, when most had gone home and there were less to contend with.  I’m supposed to be going to a meal at a pub called the Swiss Cottage on Sunday with 12 of them – some of those I got to know vaguely, but I’d sooner not go – it sounds a rather too expensive, and unnecessary evening.  The four of us went to T. Square to bring in the New Year, but apart from the spectacle of hundreds of balloons floating away up at midnight, and some nits prancing about in the fountains – we watched from a little distance on the St Martin’s in the Fields Church steps – it wasn’t very exciting.  And we were only there for a short while.  None of the girls wanted to go in the crowds, and though I might have if I’d been with Mike or Kevin or someone, they made me feel rather panicky with their constant insistences that we all hang onto each other ALL the time.  By the time we got home from the party it was about three – I was to sleep on a couple of chairs in a sleeping bag at the girls’ place – and I was feeling rather unpleasant generally – I helped those girls wash up the dishes twice that night, at the party, while the hostess stood around looking on!  And we missed a lift home to the girls’ house as a result.  (Aaaagh – what a mess this is.) I didn’t mind doing them the first time  - but twice was too much!  And then I slept badly, I had a bit of Kingsley’s sore throat, and I’m always too hot in a sleeping bag.  What a night!  And then I had to go to the copyist’s all day straight from the girls’ without a shave – I was too lazy to carry my shaving gear as well my pyjamas, but since I’d gone to the copyist’s on the Monday with a day’s growth then too, they probably think I live in a state of permanent bristle. I hadn’t been due to go anywhere on the Monday and had got caught out.  Anyway, Pat cooked me a fantastic breakfast – beans, an egg, sausages, toast – and since I was still feeling rubbishy I couldn’t even finish it!  She’ll make someone a marvellous wife – not me, though – I don’t think I could stand someone quite as scatty as those two can sometimes be around me for life!  [Apparently unaware that people do grow up.] Actually they’re not so scatty as of yore – just indecisive – eg, if I hadn’t sort of organized them about getting off and going to T. Sq, we’d never have got there. For all their close and long friendship, they don’t think alike enough for me.  [What?]

 

To go on, I went to the copyist’s - did I tell you his name – George Bamford, in his late 40s I should think, glasses, little mo, and though apparently disorganized, a very thorough copyist – though even he with Zerox [sic] machines and all finds keeping up a task.  How did they do it in the old days?  His wife does all the photo-copying for him – he does all the necessary writing.  And though they appear to be a middle-class sort of couple they talk when their boy is there – he’s 19, 20, like East-enders.  In fact, George talks a good deal of the time  - and copies away while he does so!  But it was most fascinating to hear the talk around me of recording sessions, the Rolf Harris show (which they do all the copying for) concerts, etc.  I spent all day from about 11.15 till 6.00 cutting single lines of music from photo-copies, pasting them on (with double-sided Sellotape) another sheet (and editing them so that the players could turn over conveniently), in order that these sheets could then be cleaned up with a white paste substance (so that the edges of the cuts don’t show ) so that they could then be photographed again, blown up to a bigger size – the print was tiny – and thus turned into completely new parts.  Most of the work as awkward as this – this stuff was just too

 

Part II

finickety to copy out.  They gave me a luncheon voucher for three bob for lunch and I just went out – determined that I wasn’t going to starve because I’d been feeling so rotten – and had a 5/6 lunch – four courses!  And not too badly either.  The Bamfords are a very nice couple – they seemed to be giving Christmas presents – belated, to nearly all the kids in the block of flats they live and work in! Certainly there were enough kids there at various times.  And he’s very patient – though I think I was working well enough (since I did the whole job of four complete parts in the one day) and I think that some work (more of it) will definitely come my way.  He’s been asking me to ring and find out about checking some more parts, but so far he hasn’t had time to do them.  He even said tonight, since it was the third time he’d had to put me off about the work, that it would definitely be given to me, when he was ready, so! this will be a little extra cash in hand. 

 

However withal this filling in my time – and Hansel and Gretel and Les Girls (film) on Thursday, the first with Kevin and the other with Mike, the week that I’d planned to spend in practice slipped through my fingers somewhat.  However I did get some work done.  Hansel and Gretel was rather a delight, with two adults in the parts looking like kids!  The witch was a bit disappointing – played by Aussie tenor Ronald Dowd, but he looked unhappy as a dame – and consequently the last act was nowhere near as good as the other two.  Les Girls is a Gene Kelly, Kay Kendal, Mitzi Gaynor, Leslie Phillips, Patrick MacNee (Avengers) musical, which Mike has been insisting  for years was very very good – and it was.  The music, for Cole Porter, wasn’t up to scratch, but it was well performed, and the whole was very enjoyable. 

 

On Friday I came home after playing the piano most of the day and spent the time copying out my songs for Kurt.  Did this all day Saturday too, and didn’t even go out as I thought I might have done at one stage.  (While I think about it, cooked myself a pie tonight with: two half-cooked sausages I started for breakfast but which I’d originally intended having on last Sunday and forgot – forgot yesterday too -  a half cauli, also intended for Sunday’s meal, two enormous potatoes, mashed, a left-over tomato, an onion, and a small tin of vege soup, without the water added.  And cooked for about a quarter of an hour: it was delish! Crowl the chef is back!  Actually I got the general idea from a recipe I’d used one other time, with considerable adaptation.)

 

On Sunday, just for interest’s sake, and I suppose to keep Kevin company, I went to Worthing with him, by train.  He was going back to pay his ex-employer a fiver he had had to borrow when he arrived back in England, and so we went via Brighton.  Saw quite a bit on the way down – passed Gatwick Airport where only a night before a plane had plowed into a house a mile from the airport, and where also there’d been a train crash – didn’t see either of the wrecks, of course, but when it got to Brighton it was already dark – five o’clock – and drizzling and windy.  But we walked around a bit for ¾ of an hour, and had a quick glance at the place.  When we went on to Worthing, a nice enough wee town – also a coastal place – and spent an hour talking to mine host, his wife, and dog. 

 

Monday, we were back to work with a vengeance – a free morning, but straight into rehearsals for the coming master-classes.  I’m out of working condition, I can see – we were spoilt over the pre-Christmas time because we had no language classes and no coaching sessions.  Still it’s very nice to see everyone again, and though this morning’s reps’ class was rather terrifying, and the forthcoming Opera for All auditions at the end of the month don’t help either, but once again it was all very good.  The class this morning was taken by John Gardner – that’s all I know about him – on Massenet’s Manon.  It was terrifying, because I was first to play and had to play the overture!! Fortunately it was playable, but he was very finickety about right harmonies – wrong notes don’t matter as long as the harmonies are right, he says; fair enough, but I hadn’t even looked at the overture!  Still, that wasn’t the worst: when my turn came round again , he wanted me to play one bar and of course do you think I could get the blasted thing right for him, on the spot?  Makes me shake to think about it all.  But he said something that interested me: that he was rather of the opinion that we shouldn’t prepare these works beforehand for the rep classes – we were expected to be able to sight-read this sort of thing as a normal course of duty, and he said that you were inclined to lose your nerve if you got flustered after you had prepared it or if your sight-reading was constantly letting you down.  I think I have lost my nerve (!) because there was a time, in the dim distant days, when you could lay anything down in front of me and I’d have a go at it.  But now it worries me.  And yet, in my own coaching sessions, I cope quite adequately with what is given me.  I think it’s the fact of having an unknown quantity in the presence of a particular rep, and the presence of the stage managers.  Oh, dear.  Well I suppose if I can survive this morning’s battering and still look the others in the face things can’t be all that bad.

 

That’s pretty brought things up to date – went to Mike’s for tea last night thence to see The Canterbury Tales, a musical, of sorts, which I enjoyed in large spots, but not entirely.  Kate and Mervyn Jarvis also ran [came? Mervyn was a good friend of Mike’s and I’d also had a bit to do with him back home.] The latter’s over here on a business holiday till the end of the month. 

 

Oh, well, pray for me!  That I’ll get through this next month, and term without too many bruises and that I’ll get some of the old confidence back.  I think perhaps that’s what lacking, you know.

[handwritten] Anyway, lots of love to you both – Mike XXXX