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. 

27.10.68 First performances and walking home...again

27.10.68

Dear Mum, I’m not sure how long it is since I last wrote, so if I repeat anything please forgive me.  I think it was about last Sunday wasn’t it?  Sorry that there are such long gaps between my letters to you but I seem to have been particularly busy this last week. I’m very grateful to get your letters so regularly; I’ve practically been able to rely on receiving one each Monday and Thursday for some weeks now, and it’s very nice. Got a Tablet, too, this week – with a postal note and a Peanuts [cartoon] inside.  The latter was especially welcome, and in fact, if you don’t mind, I wouldn't mind at all if you included the odd one in with the letters either. They’re real day-starters (told you mail arrives about 7.30 didn’t I?) so if you’ve got a pair of scissors handy...!  Thanks for the continued postal notes too – the extra amount brings two of them to 11/- and 8d, and though they always have to go away and check on the amount, it’s worth it – IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT!

Menotti as a young man

All this week we’ve had Ella Gerber on our hands of course, and I’m afraid to say everyone is glad to see the last of her.  She didn’t work at all like any producer I’ve ever met – she didn’t plot any moves out beforehand, and with the two Menottis seemed content to work it all out in her head and then wondered why what she’d say one day didn’t fit in the next!  She knows Porgy backwards, of course, but this didn’t seem to help either – the poor singers practically had to relearn the whole thing her way. It is now generally considered that when Gershwin wrote Porgy had no idea what he was doing and that he didn’t really mean to put anything down the way he did.  Ella has rediscovered it all and does it her way!  And to cap it all, Alistair, who was conducting Porgy, caught a whopper of a cold and was away from two of the most important rehearsals – so that when he came back and went to conduct the final rehearsal on Friday afternoon, Ella kept harping on about his having been away, and how so many things had been changed while he was away. The things he nearly did to her I won’t describe, but it was the most shambolic rehearsal I’ve ever been privileged to attend.  The Telephone and The Consul had gone off quite well at this rehearsal, so I don’t know why she got so Bolshy about this one!  Anyway, all 3 shows were equally successful in their own way in the evening.  We played them for the Friends of Covent Garden (people who subscribe to CG and get into the rehearsals) and our own friends in the University College Theatre, which is sort of North Central London.  All the Crowls came, and actually quite enjoyed it all, I think (I’d sent them a seven page set of notes that I typed out about the three operas so that they’d have a better idea of what they were all about) and Michael came, and for once didn’t think I played too loud, and Kingsley got as far as the tube station and couldn’t find the theatre itself.  He will not take the A to Z with him – seems to think he can always find his way about by merely looking at it at home here and then trying to do it all from memory. And then he wonders why he’s worried about getting lost!!  Perhaps this will have taught him a lesson. That all sounds a bit mean, but I can’t see why he’s too proud to use it.  He doesn’t seem particularly interested in making friends with people at Guildhall. Well, I don’t think I can help him there, it’s something he’ll have to do himself, and the sooner the better.  [Crikey, I sound like a fussy grandfather!]

I made a few blues in the playing of The Telephone, but nothing too worrying, and the audience really enjoyed it, and really laughed, what’s more.  The Consul was tremendously moving – I wouldn't have thought it could be, but yet some of the bits we’d thought most absurd during rehearsals were most effective.  I didn’t find Porgy and Bess nearly so moving – I don’t think Ella has ever managed to get anybody’s sympathy about it.  [I knew Porgy and Bess reasonably well from the NZ Opera Co’s production of it, which I’d seen when they toured it – I had ushered for it, so probably saw every performance in Dunedin.]

After the show, Mike and Hazel and David Gorringe (another stage manager and about 25, small with glasses and very friendly with a mad sense of humour) and David Syrus and I went to a nearby pub, and spent a while there doing considerably more talking than anything else – if that relieves your mind!  After that I went down to where Mike is now living – near Oxford St - and had a quick coffee because I didn’t want to get stranded in London city again – I told you about the previous Saturday, didn’t I?  Let me know if I didn’t.  So I shot down to the tube and caught the last train.  The only trouble was I started doing the Tablet crossword, and went straight past my station!  The next train was some time about 5 am, so I had to start walking back to Plaistow, which shouldn't have been far. But, the ticket-collector gave me rather obscure directions and I found (later) that I was actually walking north instead of west.  [Plainly I hadn’t taken my own advice about always carrying the A to Z!]  I finally caught a bus back to Plaistow to the street running parallel with Balaam St, and arrived home about one thirty. 

Kingsley and Mike and I went to Don Giovanni on Thursday (for nothing and sat in the front row!) and Kevin, who had just arrived back from Spain, came too.  It wasn’t a bad production, but the designing was terrible. None of the clothes belonged to any particular period – except one that looked like German 18^th century, and the sets were like a child’s play box on a larger scale.  Terrible! [This may have been the Sadler’s Wells production, the first production for the company at their new home at the Coliseum. It was directed by John Gielgud, and wasn’t well received, apparently.]

[Hazel, mentioned above, by the way, is from British Guyana, and has been here for about nine years or seven?  She’s twenty-seven, and has a very infectious laugh.)

Yesterday went out to the Crowls, and in the afternoon went with Reg to the jumble sale being held for the Intellectually Handicapped Children’s Society, and finished up selling old men’s clothes. Quite a lot of fun, actually, trying to match up the men who came along with the clothes we had. And this morning after Mass, Reg and I went and walked in Hampstead Heath, which goes on for miles in every direction, and would be very easy to get lost in. [We revisited Hampstead Heath in 2007 when staying with a friend in Kentish Town – I’d forgotten just vast it is.]  I better go and do some washing now as I didn’t seem to have much time to do anything last week.  Lots of love, Mike. 

20.10.68 The Magic Flute & a long walk home

20/10/68

Dear Mum, I can’t recall when I last wrote whether Ella Gerber had arrived or not, but she came on Wednesday, and promptly set the place in disorder, by rearranging all the schedules that had been worked out for her, and never keeping to her own time-tables either. And though she may do the students a lot of good in acting – she would make a marvellous play producer, she seems to know very little about music at all, and consequently it’s very hard to make her appreciate points that are necessary to the productions from the singers point of view. 

Anyway, enough of her. We went to see The Magic Flute on Friday morning.  (Also saw the Opera for All version of Manon – it wasn’t bad, although I think the production has some very bad moments, and Ann Gordon who is doing Manon, is really very good, but the thing rather requires a huge chorus and stage, to hide the faults that promptly turn up when done this way.  Never mind, it was quite enjoyable and the third act is excellent.)  The Flute is a delight.  It’s sheer pantomime, anyway, but has the added advantage of a good bloke on the musical side – Mozart!  The whole thing is done on a sort of raised stage with an infinite variety of squares set into it. It is only after the first scene that one appreciates the fact that the entire floor is full of trap-doors and throughout the piece, people suddenly vanish through the floor or appear unexpectedly in a cloud of smoke, or props rise out of it, etc. Fascinating. The dragon in the first scene is a little tame – he hangs in mid-air, snorting a bit but not really threatening the hero. But when the Queen of the Night arrives a little later, the scenery at the back rolls away to thunder and lightning, and a set of stars appear to reveal her slowly gliding forward on a platform.  The girl who is playing her – a Dutch lady – has so remarkable a voice it almost ceases to be human in sound.  When she sings at first it doesn’t sound like much, but once she starts her coloratura you wonder how such perfection can exist in a human being.  Every single note is clear – there’s practically a definite click between them, and she hits top Ds and Es etc as though it were as easy as eating.  [This was Christina Deutekom – rest of the cast listed here.]  The rest of the cast are equally good: the tenor is the right shape, and sings well, the soprano heroine is gorgeous in every way, the bass is like a singing statue but the sound is magnificent, and the women who play the three ladies, even though they have some tricky ensemble work, have such clear enunciation that you wonder if you’re really hearing it right. And the Papageno, though his voice is not to my liking, is very funny.  But the whole thing is full of delightful ideas – the animals (about twenty children) who appear when Tamino plays his flute, the chorus of baddies who dance away when Papageno plays his magic bells, the three boys (who sing very well) and invariably appear in a floating chariot type thing that swings slowly and gracefully across, up, down and around the stage, the lighting effects throughout: lamps that appear to have no source, but which quietly flicker away in a kind of non-existent breeze, a huge cyc (pronounced syke) [short for cyclorama] or plain backcloth that at one part turns from a daylight blue slowly through every blue in existence, carpets that don’t just roll straight forward, but which have a bias in them and roll round at an angle, so that they look like they are vanishing over the horizon (like the yellow brick road in Oz) and so on and so on.  It’s surely one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen on stage, and I really wish you too could see this particular show.  [I’d seen the NZ Opera Company’s Magic Flute a few years before this, and had been charmed out of my socks by their production, so this must have been good. I can still visualise the Queen of the Night’s entrance, in fact.]

This weekend I didn’t go up to the Crowls as we had a rehearsal on Saturday morning, and it wasn’t due to finish till 1.00, and that’s too late to start tootling up there, though Reg suggested I come up a bit later. But I said I felt perhaps I should stay home and show Kingsley round a bit of London (as it happened he didn’t seem particularly interested when I did. He’s a funny boy in some ways: - he seems to think I’m very reserved, particularly as far as the opposite sex is concerned, [I was] and yet quite honestly, I think the boot’s entirely on the other  foot. Don’t mean I’m Don Juan, but I think I’m interested in a more general outlook on life, etc. He doesn’t drink, smoke, eat sweets or fruit, or ice-cream, doesn’t read books, aaaagh! Seems to me to be a rather narrow sphere he’s set himself.  However there’s no use forcing things on him, but thank goodness Mike’s still here, cynical and unpunctual as he may be, he’s at least on my wavelength.) [This may be a bit harsh about Kingsley: he was probably just interested in things that I wasn’t interested in!]

At 5.30 last night, I went to where Mike is at present living – Kingsley was going to Aida – and from there we went round to Kensington way somewhere where Norman and Doris McKinlay from Dunedin were staying and finished off the scraps of food and drink that they wanted to get rid of before they left today on their way home. They’ve been here about three months on a business trip. I think. [Norman McKinlay, as I recall, was involved in theatre in Dunedin, but wasn’t someone I knew well; he’d have been better acquainted with Mike.]  Mike and I had intended to go to a film at the NFT at 8.45 but we didn’t get there, and so found ourselves in Oxford St at 10 or so with nothing to do.  Well, we wandered down through Soho (which even at night is only rowdy, not dangerous or anything, rather sleazy perhaps) and called in at a pub just before closing time (11.00) and had a half of bitter (compare Coronation St!).  Mike thought that buses ran all night so we decided to go to a late film showing, and went, and got out at 1.30, to find that buses don’t run on Saturday night for some obscure reason.  So we wended our way back to his flat which is close by, and had a cup of coffee and a glass of brandy and ginger, to put some warmth into me, because I’d decided to walk home. At least a good deal of the way and then get a taxi for the last part. Well, I left Mike at 2.50 and covered something like four miles in an hour and about 20 minutes. It’s a straight, though long walk from Oxford St via Commercial Rd to Plaistow. And wound up getting a taxi for the last couple of miles and arriving home about 4.30 a little tired! But actually it was quite an enjoyable night, just relaxed, and with nothing special to do. Mike and I are like brothers now, I feel [handwritten], we accept each other’s faults because we’ve known each other so long and just enjoy what’s left of each other’s company.  Luv Mike.

[From Oxford St to Newman Rd in Plaistow, via Commercial Rd, is about seven and a half miles.  Google reckons it would take about two and a half hours walking. Perhaps I was following in Charles Dickens’ footsteps: he often went for long walks at night, anything up to twenty miles!]

16.10.68 My flatmate arrives

This might be the last of these posts for a couple of weeks: I'm away in Christchurch babysitting the house of some friends.  

16^th Oct 68

Dear Mum, thanks for the added amount on the postal notes – they gave me 10d on each one – which seems to me rather a lot, but he went away and looked it up and everything, so I didn’t complain.  But listen, you’ll have to stop spending half your pay each week on me like this.  It really is a bit much.  By the time you've paid for the stamps and excess on the P.N.s, and everything else, it must cost a small fortune.  You’ll have to be a bit more moderate really – or else I’ll have more money here than you! 

Kingsley arrived on Monday, though hardly as planned.  In fact I spent a very frustrating day on Monday.  I seemed to recall that he was arriving in the afternoon, so as I was finished at the Centre at 4.15, I tootled off to Earls Court to meet him, thinking that he would probably be there by then.  When I got there, he wasn’t, and it turned out he was booked in at the Salisbury Court Hotel, just around the road. So round the road I went, and he wasn’t there either. So I rang the Air Inquiries up to see when the flight from Vienna was to come, and they told me it would be about an hour late, at 6.30, which meant it would come into the West London Terminal at about 7.30.  So I wandered round there and waited patiently till then – about an hour and a quarter, and then went down to the bus part to meet him.  At about 8.30 there was still no sign of him, and I was a bit anxious to know what to do.  I kept ringing up the hotel to see if he’d gone straight there, and getting them to send out calls for him at the airport, but there was no news of him anywhere.  So I went and had a bite to eat, and then walked back to the Salisbury Court hotel, only about ½ of a mile, and left a long note with instructions and the other key for the flat.  And went home.  I decided to ring back when I got to Plaistow to see if he had arrived. The first phone booth didn’t have the book in which the number I needed would have been, the next one found the hotel engaged, the next one wouldn't take the 6d and the girl at the other end just kept saying hullo until I rang off, the next one was quite dead, the next one had the earpiece missing, the next had the whole receiver missing, the next was dead, the next was so wrecked it wouldn't even sit on the ledge, and in the next a man was doing his weekly accounts I think, because he seemed to be waiting for someone to ring back, and in the last one I tried there was nothing to put any money in! I should have known I think that there was something behind all this but I was getting so mad...!  Anyway, I burst into the flat to find the boy in bed!!  And I get mad again to think of it.  He’d arrived in the morning, coming on an earlier flight if you please, and even then he’d arrived at the West London Terminal, had somehow come to the conclusion that it was closer to Plaistow than to the OVC, if you can believe, and had gone out there.  He was lucky to strike Mrs Marshall home.  I didn’t go mad at him, though I really felt like doing so – he could have at least rung me, I think, and anyway I was rather over being mad at anything by that time – I’d cursed and sworn at so many phone booths that I’d calmed down a bit!

However he seems to be getting on all right and he’s sort of reasonable round the flat and helpful – if that doesn’t sound like granddad talking!  [It sounds more like Grandma talking.] But I arrived home tonight, at 8.15 to find him in BED!  Bit strange, but never mind. 

Was out at the Crowls again at the weekend, though this time we didn’t really go anywhere much  - I had to go and play for someone from the Centre on Sat morning, up in Baker Street way, and this made everything later.  I’d been able to warn the Crowls fortunately. (And I got ten bob for my playing too!)  We were to go to Hatfield House, but it was closed till Easter and we looked in at the tail-end of a Fayre, in the grounds.  Then home, and Nina and Margaret and I watched some very curious TV.  On Sunday, I had to spend quite some time doing languages, but Reg and went for a short trip up to a very uninspiring church, in the very last Northern London suburb. 

Ella Gerber arrived today, and seemed to leave chaos (!) behind her because she has such different ideas of the three pieces of Opera we’re doing that we’ve all had to rethink. And unfortunately she knows very little about music, so I really wonder if she will be of any great value – she may give the singers some acting ideas – there’s no doubt she is a fairly good producer, but as far as producing opera goes, I don’t really think she knows enough.  She knows what she wants with Porgy and Bess, but we have some considerable doubts about it being what Gershwin wanted!  Anyway now that she’s here we’ll have to put up with her I guess.

We’re having a rather tiring week – at least I am.  On Monday of course I spent the time looking for his lordship, and last night he and David Syrus and I went to [a] film that we will probably miss otherwise, and then we didn’t get home till about 10, and then I had to get myself something to eat, tonight we had Miss G. until 7.30, and tomorrow we have a dress rehearsal of the Opera For All Manon, and on Friday we go to see The Magic Flute in the morning and then have Ella for the rest of the day, and then we have her again on Sat morning.  And somewhere along the line we’re supposed to be doing the work for our ordinary classes.  But I feel tired out already!  Oh well, I suppose we’ll get there.

Kiri, and another girl from the Centre are in an opera (being done in concert version) at the Queen Elizabeth Hall – adjoining the Festival Hall, on Friday night, and I’d rather like to see that too...  It’s just impossible, though. 

Well, for once I seem to have some room on the end of a letter.  Have you sent those clothes to Francisco at all.  If you do will you let me know and I’ll let them know that it’s coming.  Or do you think they’ll be too small for him already? [Francisco was a Korean boy whom I had been supporting for some time in a Korean Orphan Scheme run by a Catholic priest in the country.] 

[handwritten] well, that seems to be it, and look at all the space I’ve got.  LOTS OF LOVE, Mike. 

30.9.68 - Travels and Travails

30.9.68

Dear Mum, how are the pair of you thriving?  I had a ridiculous day yesterday, Sunday, but quite interesting for all that.  In the morning I had decided to go to Mass at the Convent which is only a short distance from Newman Rd.  This was the first time I’d gone there because the first Sunday I went way up to the next parish and the last two have been spent in Wood Green. I arrived to find the place singularly quiet for a Catholic Church, and Mass just finished.  And not another!  However there was a priest there and we had a wee chat and he gave me a timetable on the newsletter, and said I could go to Mass at 12 at the main parish church down in the Barking Road. So I went home again and had breakfast, and then at 11.45 set off, thinking that this would give me plenty of time.  It turned out to be a longer walk than I anticipated but I made it with a second to spare.  On the way home it rained, and for once I didn’t have an umbrella.  So I got a bit wet, but it was one of those days when it suddenly pours out of a blue sky. 

 

I did some German – incidentally, the 3^rd Programme is starting a German lesson series on Monday, so I think I’ll get their little booklet and listen to that in conjunction with the OC’s classes.  (I'm still not very enthused over the Italian lessons – which makes it harder; at least Frau Radinger has a marvellous sense of humour and we really have a good time learning, but in the other class we waste more time than anything.)

 

After this I had planned to go to see a Laurel and Hardy Quartet of films at the NFT.  It poured as I was setting out for Plaistow station. Anyway, saw the films, which were very good, without getting very wet on the way, and then hopped on the usual train to come back. The gremlins were at work again.  We got as far as Mansion House and the train was stopped and everyone told to change.  So an entire train-load of people walked up over to the next platform, and waited...and waited.  A guard told a group of people near me that someone had jumped under a train at Aldgate East which was between there and Plaistow. But at another station they reckoned that something had collapsed on the line.  Anyway, the next train was going to Tower Hill, a little further on my way, so I got on that.  And would have got a Circle Line to take me on a detour, avoiding the station where the trouble was.  However the wait at Tower Hill was even longer.  On the trip to there I picked up a wee friend, a boy of about 10 or 11, who was going North-East.  He and I had a discussion going to TH as to what was the best route for him to take, though I wasn’t a lot of help. At TH, I picked up my 2^nd friend, a lady in her 30s, travelling with a great suitcase and a couple of bags, who knew her way around but who had got onto the wrong platform, and who was regretting having crossed over with her bags.  She didn’t say so, but obviously had, and anyway she was very helpful to us two kids in giving us an idea of the best way to get home.  A guard said that I’d have to go to Mile End, still before Plaistow, and get a bus.  However, no train appeared on our platform and so I offered to carry her case over to the other platform, where trains were going back the way we’d come, but where there was a chance of getting to Mile End.  So she very gratefully accepted, and we took our little boy with us, and crossed over and caught a train that was then waiting.  At Monument station we walked underground to Bank, got on the Central Line and were on our way. Actually we left her at Bank as the train which the boy and I got – it was his homebound one – wasn’t going far enough for her, and she waved and said God bless as we went.  She was very nice, but possibly a bit worried in case I took off with her case – people, according to Mike and K. don’t help each other much in London, but from things I’ve seen, just quietly, I think they’re wrong (M & K, I mean)!  Anyway, my little boy – who had a hair-lip scar – and I shot through to Mile End where he went on, saying thank you (I don’t know what for, because he probably knew more about it all than I do) and where by that time I was able to catch a very crowded train to P.  (This morning it was absolutely packed, and tonight was worse – I thought I’d seen the rush hour jam, but tonight when I put my arm up to take hold of the strap to hang on, I couldn’t get it down again, until we reached a station!)

 

My troubles weren't over: I’d bought some mince on Sat, and used half of it in my main meal on Sat, and had kept the rest for Sun. Was all organised, yesterday. I took the meat out of the cupboard, opened it, closed it, and threw it in the waste-bin, then I took the lot outside, and put it in the bucket!! Was I mad?  I thought it would at least last 24 hours!  Fortunately I had 2 sausages left over from breakfast, so I combined them in a thing called Italian Risotto Milanese, or some-such, substituting what I had in me larder for what they suggested in the recipe.  I think the only thing we both used was the rice!  However it did not kill me.  But I’m going to a different butcher in future.  Should never have trusted this one – he has the only dirty postcards I’ve ever seen hung up on his wall![I presume I meant that he was the only butcher who’d ever displayed dirty postcards. My inexperience as a cook keeps showing up in these letters; refrigerators were much less common, of course, and I don't think we had one at my home in Dunedin at that point, so keeping meat fresh was always a bit of an issue.]

 

Today at the OC the only thing I was down for all day was German, which seems a bit odd, but I went in at 10 all the same, and spent the morning doing things on my own, and this afternoon looked in on a coaching session by Norman Feasey*, one of the big reps in London.  Great on Wagner, apparently. (He was coaching Alan Opie, a baritone about my age, from Cornwall, and quite a friendly guy. He’s in one of The Telephone casts.) N.F was seated when I arrived, and I noticed as the lesson went on that though he was shorter than me when sitting he had enormous bone structure, so that when he did finally stand, he sort of expanded in all directions. 

 

Tomorrow is busy again, Wednesday not bad, although though I have the afternoon off, we’ve all got to go to a dress rehearsal of the Opera For All Group’s Italian Girl in Algiers at 6.00 which is a bit of a nuisance [handwritten] because it’s a waste of time and cash to go home in the afternoon.  Ann Gordon is in it.  Anyway I hadn’t intended to fill this whole air-letter!  Never mind.  Lots & lots of love Mike.

 

4th and 5th Letter 10.9.68

The next letter was a double - so much to write about that it required two aerograms sent at the same time. 

10.9.68

Dear mum, I received a letter from you before I left the OVC, by the way, in case you thought I hadn't got anything.  Got a letter from wee Glenda Ferrall in Aussie today.  [ I think she worked on the NZ Opera Co’s Die Fledermaus as part of the backstage crew. Certainly there was a Glenda Ferrall listed as a stage manager in Australia ]  She says she did a war-dance around the school when she got the news that I’d come over here – but I don’t know whether to believe her or not...!  Well, to bring you up to date.  On Saturday, due to receiving a last minute message to see [Mike] at NZ House at 11.45, I scampered out to Plaistow at eight in the morning – making the people at OVC think I hadn't and wouldn't pay my bill – and then when I’d had breakfast at the flat, I scampered back to town and just arrived in time to be there before Mike.  He and Kathleen were off to Spain, hitch-hiking, and so I gave them my address and we chatted a bit, and then I said I must be off to see Reg. So I dashed onto another train, although at that stage I had a good half-hour up my sleeve, and arrived out at Wood Green station at midday.  Unfortunately that day was the day they introduced a new bus service, and the bus that I’d caught with ease on the Thursday night wasn’t running.  So after standing there cursing and muttering, I decided to walk to Reg’s place.  I knew it was a fair distance, but I thought I’d do it before 12.30, after which time I was supposed to have rung them to tell them that I might be late.  Well, I walked and walked (!) but still after going for half an hour hadn't got to the street that connects with Woodland Way [where Reg and Mavis lived].  And it was so hot.  (The weather has been superb since I arrived – you can’t see the sun, but the surrounding haze is very warm).  Anyway, I thought I’d ring him, and tell him I was having difficulties.  By the time I’d discovered that since I was so close to the place I was ringing and was ringing from a Post Office (on a Sat. – everything is open) [in New Zealand at this period, everything was closed on a Saturday] and had found I didn’t need the sixpence I’d just carefully changed for two 3ds, it was getting on.  [A slightly confusing sentence I can’t unravel.] However, as it turned out, I was only a street away from the connecting road.  Aagh.

Anyway, it didn’t matter – lunch was by no means ready, and Reg and I sat in the garden and talked.  Met Mavis’ sister, too – she’s not nearly the invalid I’d imagined, just looks pale and wan, but has a cheeky sense of humour – like so many of the British.  You really begin to understand what kept them going through all the war years when you’re living amongst them.  [I probably never told my mother this, but in my first week in London, I stopped at a stall that was selling stationery and asked for a rubber – as erasers were then known in New Zealand. He looked at me quizzically, and made one of the cheeky remarks that I claimed above that was typical of the British.  Probably thought I was a twat.  The Brits on the other hand didn’t always get our NZ humour, which has a slightly darker streak to it, I think.  I remember one of the other students at the Opera Centre telling me that people thought some of the things I said were rude; to me they’d merely been typical examples of NZ humour.]

St Albans Cathedral from the west, showing Grimthorpe's 19th century west front

After dinner – NZ lamb! – we went for a long ride, originally the intention being that we should go to St Albans Cathedral, last on the rather lengthy list of several places we went to.  Follow?  But we spent so much time wandering about Epping Forest, and Nazeing, where they all used to live (Mavis’ family next door to Reg and Mavis) and of course stopping off for the essential cup of tea and cakes (at a really old place – the walls were all ye olde wood, and it was held up by great logs that looked as though someone had taken a hack at) and collecting a dozen eggs because they are farm-fresh, that by the time we got to St A’s it was closing time.  so we got in the door and out again.  But what a fantastic place!  It seems to go on forever, length-wise, and is tall and wide to match.  And this is only one of the lesser churches.  (St Paul’s, which I’ve now been in twice, is always in the middle of a service, and one can’t go right round and see everything.)  With a bit of luck however we’ll call there this coming Saturday!  I’ve been invited out to stay the night this time – supposedly because it’s such a long trip from my place to theirs.  It’s more awkward than long. I have to change tubes about three times.  [It was typical of a trip in the Anglia that we never got where we wanted to go, quite, and that it took us forever to get home again, because everyone else would be out for a weekend ride as well, and traffic jams were common.]

After tea, Reg showed me (and the others) some slides.  Quite frankly, I could have done without them, but they were fairly interesting, and I could scarcely be rude when they were doing so much for me.  This troubles me a bit, or more than a bit, really – they’re doing so much for me, for my pleasure entirely almost, and I can’t do a thing in return.  However, this Sat, I’ll try and get some flowers to take out – that’s a start. 

On Sunday, I spent an hour almost looking for a Catholic Church.  The only trouble with the A to Z Guide is that it merely marks a church as existing, it doesn’t say what religion it is, so I went in an entire circle, or rather square, by the time I’d been and come back, and saw just how much suburbia there is here.  I’d rather imagined that Plaistow would sort of stop, there’d be a gap, and then I’d come to whatever the next place is; but no, the Coronation St type-streets go on and on and unbelievably on.  and many of them really do resemble C. St.  Anyway, I eventually went to Church in the next suburb completely – and found out that the local church is only marked Convent on my map, and is only two streets away!  Aaagh! But at least I saw a lot of the area.  It’s quite fantastic the way it never ends.  (The ride with Reg showed this too.)

In the afternoon I caught up on all the washing, but haven’t done any ironing yet.  Was to do it tonight, but I think it’ll be too late, now.  I’ve got an iron – did all the washing in the sink with a basin in it.  [I tried washing the sheets in the bath, and then was told by my landlady that she did those as part of the rent.]

Yesterday I decided it was time I did some piano work, and so after checking with the school went and used one or their practice rooms for about an hour.  [These were in the basement of the building.]  Met up with Ann Gordon again – had I told you?  I met her when I first went there last week and thought it was funny how distant she was, because during Albert Herring, I’d become practically her father-confessor!  [Who knows now what this means...]  Yesterday she explained that she hadn't quite been able to place me, though she knew my name all right.  This was quite a relief as I thought perhaps she was embarrassed or some such at my being there! 

After this I walked along the Commercial Road (incidentally it is now raining outside!) and then continued to walk until I came to the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London itself.  (You can actually walk into town from C. Rd, but I keep getting sidetracked, apart from its being a long walk.) [It is a long walk, but I used to walk a lot in those days; I remember walking from the Opera Centre to Oxford St, about four and half miles, very soon after I arrived.] So after a bite to eat, on the Embankment, I went and got a ticket to go to the Tower.  Just by chance I caught a Beefeater as he was starting his spiel, and so I joined with..

[handwritten] I’ll have to carry on in another letter, luv Mike.

********

Dear mum, carrying straight on: with his group, and it was very informative and interesting. And frequently wryly amusing.  Ugh, some of the things that have gone on there.  It’s quite horrible really.  After he disposed of his group in the Chapel Royal (I think)- (carefully standing at the door so that everyone had to tip him as they went out, and telling those left that they’d have to leave as well because the next group was just about to come in; still he was worth 6d) - I went on and looked at the armour museum.  (The crown jewels had such a crowd I left them for another day.)  The collection of armour and weaponry they have here is absolutely astonishing.  Some of it goes right back to Henry 8^th and earlier, and how they must have boiled in the suits.  Most of them cover all the front, except of course what I suppose is the equivalent of a man’s fly these days, and only the back of the torso at the back, but some of the suits cover everything, and I mean everything.  Ugh!  [This is possibly a reference to one of the suits having a metal codpiece: see photo]  There were horses’ suits and even an elephant’s.  Most of them are on models too, which makes it much more interesting.  On the second floor of the White Tower which is the one you can see in all the pictures, is a beautiful little chapel – all white and clean, and un-stained-glass.  Apparently, originally the three floors, and the basement of this tower had no windows! and it was C. Wren who was commissioned to put them in – through 15 feet of stone!  (Dear old Wren turns up all over the place – he built the Monument to the Great Fire, which was where I was headed yesterday, but didn’t get to till today, and it stands near the Thames, and involves a climb of 311 steps round and round.  But the view through the haze is tremendous.)  And his house is just opposite the Church on the other side of the Thames.  I spent quite a while at the Tower – so did some other people, about 15 to 20 years in some cases, in one or two rooms – and then I hopped on a boat which took me down to Westminster and which showed us some of the sights (which we could actually see from the land of course!)  [Plainly, in the light of my limited budget, it was cheaper to be a tourist in London in those days.]  There are lots of visitors here all the time. Americans, in droves, and all knowing nothing about where they are or what they’re looking at, as far as I can see, and also French (who take it all in with great interest, but making considerably less noise about it) and Germans and Italians.  So what with them speaking tongues I don’t understand and the great variety of dialects, I might as well have stayed in Rome! I have no intention of speaking beautiful English, incidentally – very few Londoners do, even the middle-class lot; in fact I’ll probably wind up speaking like an East-Ender, which is really harsh and grating.  [I had to learn to speak more clearly for the English in general; the normal quiet Kiwi voice just wasn’t understood by many Brits.  I came home eventually speaking a good deal more like a middle-class English person than a Cockney, incidentally.]

Anyway, I’d gone up to the West End (which doesn’t necessarily entail going to the Theatre, as I’d always imagined!) to see if I could get a standing room seat for a play that Richard Briars is in, (actually the box-office lady said that I’d really have to stand though Mike said this isn’t so), but all the other seats in the house hadn't been sold, so, I went down and got a Gallery seat for The Importance of Being Earnest, for 4/-. [This production apparently ran for nine months, continually sold out.] This meant leaning forward and seeing the whole thing under the rail separating us from the Upper Circle, but it was worth it.  And the hard high seats. A very beautiful production, with a lot of excellent acting and details, and with a marvellous cast: Daniel Massey (guess whose son?) and John Standing (whom I’d seen in three films and who was the best in this cast) as the two young men, Isabel Jeans as Lady Bracknell, Flora Robson as Miss Prism, amongst others.  But there was an American girl behind me, with an Arabian girl, I think, and all the American got out of it was the fact that it was all terribly artificial, which was precisely the cast’s intentions, and some very obscure points that neither Wilde nor the Producer can have been greatly bothered with.  Two French girls who sat through the first act must have felt very lost, and left after that. 

Today I went back to the Opera Centre – I’ve discovered just how quickly I can get there – by cutting out two stations entirely and walking for about ten minutes through some not-too-back streets.  It’s 6d cheaper too.  I then went to the Monument, and then just wandered.  Got church-mania – and kept on finding another in a most unexpected spot.  There are dozens around London and not just small ones either – all have at least pretensions at greatness. In two I found someone doing some organ practice, the first was actually having a lesson and was playing something very bright, and in the second the lady was preparing for a recital tomorrow, I think, and played two fairly lengthy things both based around a simple tune, but filled up and around and below and behind with all sorts of interesting ornamentations and effects.  I’ve never heard anything like some of the sounds that evolved: curious wind-like whistlings, great lugubrious rumblings, etc, and not just plain old harmony either – both had some very weird and wonderful chords in them, unless the lady wasn’t as good as I thought.

Had my first large tea here tonight.  Pork chops (more meat on them than lamb, I think) with potatoes and cauli.  Nothing was really thoroughly cooked, however: the meat seemed to me to be catching fire all the time, and probably didn’t have a chance with me anxiously looking at it all the time, and the potatoes and c. didn’t have enough time, because I though that the meat was being overcooked – it wasn’t!  But I thoroughly enjoyed the lot – had to put it on a bigger cold plate, too, after keeping a plate in the warming part all the time!  Still the oven has a good booklet accompanying it, so I’m sure I’ll have some success yet.  May even be able to invite Uncle R and Aunt M out for tea!!?  (I’ve decided I’d better call them that – it seems that they prefer it, by the way Uncle Reg refers to Aunt Mavis all the time).  Thank God for their radio, incidentally.  It’s been invaluable already – particularly when all the electricity goes off – as it did in the middle of cooking the meal tonight!! Lots of love, Mike.

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...!]