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

30.1.70 - Decision-making to the max

30.1.70

Dear Mum, this will no doubt surprise you somewhat to find me writing again so soon, but this week has been a week of decisions (as you may have gleaned from the last letter) and I guessed that you would probably be interested. (          ) Blank space for your comment.

Today has been particularly fruitful, more in the way of starting points than actual results, but it is the getting started that counts, isn’t it? First thing, in the morning mail was from the Catholic Introductions Bureau. If that strikes you as a little curious in any way, bear with me and I’ll explain. Life seemed to be going on in its own sweet way, but I’m afraid that without some real friend of the opposite sex it was also going in a rather dull way, and after the other night’s episode, which I mentioned previously, when nothing seemed to be appearing either career-wise or new friends-wise, and I absolutely begged the Good Lord for a bit of assistance, then it seemed I ought to take notice of any little hints of help the Lord might give me. I went to Mass the next morning and in the porch of the Church was an ad for this Bureau. Well, for a start I tried to ignore it, and went and did some shopping, but the Church was still open when I came back (it’s usually closed up in front after Mass) so I popped in the door and took a note of their address, and wrote off to them before I thought too much more about it, asking for some information. The next step is even more needful of that essentially human quality ˗ guts (!) ˗ but I think it would be foolish to stop at this stage.

It’s not that I don’t meet girls, though I’m not the world’s latest Casanova by any stretch of the imagination, but after H. and even perhaps M., I can only think it’s foolish to try and think of going on with a non-Catholic girl. As people, you know, H. and I would have got on fine, I think, and therein would have been quite successfully married, but ‘my conditioning’ as she put it (she didn’t have any conditioning, I presume, or else controlled it!) would obviously have got in the way entirely. By my conditioning of course she meant religion, in this case, anyway, and I suppose she felt she was fighting a losing battle with a lover who was even more important to me than she was. So that was some of the reasoning behind this first decision. I have no idea whether anything will come of it; it may even turn out to be more a mess than my previous forays into the fray, but sitting on my butt for the next fifty years just won’t be very exciting, so here goes!

Next thing in the mail was from Trinity College telling me that I’d left it too long to be able to do just a theory exam, as it’s five years since I did the practical, (I guessed it would be), so decision number 2 was to decide to take the exam in totum again. Now unless I’m organised about this, I thought, that will be as far as it goes, so I took decision number three and rang up Doris Berry, who teaches music, and asked her if she’d take on another pupil. She suggested the Associated Board (is it?) is in fact better as far as standard goes than Trinity, and since it doesn’t matter now, I may as well take their exam. So I’m going to have an hour a week with her, and she sounds quite keen to get to work ˗ like Miss Perry [my last teacher back home in Dunedin] she finds the idea of working with an adult pupil for a change quite a delight apparently. So!

Decision number four (still with me?) was to go out and buy a new pair of shoes. Did I tell you I bought a pair not long ago? Well, I just can’t wear them ˗ they crucify my heels, and no amount of Elastoplast on my heels helps, and anyway they don’t really look as good as they did when I bought them! I went to another shop this time, and the staff consisted of a middle-aged Cockney lady, and a young negro boy who served me, with the lady throwing in comments occasionally. (I arrived at the shop puffed out after having helped two other negroes to push a Jew’s car in order to get it to start: desegregation starts around here!)

What a difference it makes to feel in a good mood yourself ˗ suddenly the whole world is happy: even the miserable-looking people are only pretending. I have the happiest two butchers in London, I think: I never struck such an atmosphere of friendliness as is in that shop. They have each other on in a way one doesn’t see too much over here; it’s quite like home! Anyway, I’ve bought another, more expensive pair of shoes; I won’t be able to afford to buy any more clothes for years at this rate!

I have a fifth decision yet to make: this is more difficult somehow as it brings me back to point A again, concerning as it does repetiteuring. The Opera for All Auditions go on on Thursday, and David seems to think it’s worth my while to re-audition because so few of the reps there [at the Opera Centre] at present are interested in the London group. But it means trying to find something to audition with. I can’t use the same things again, and don’t want to. David tells me (and my ego inflates and fills the room) that he thinks I was the best pianist of last year’s lot, but of course as he knows and I know even better, I lack a good deal of the musicianship I ought to have. And he reckons Robertson has a soft spot for me for some reason (to do with NZ partly and with the fact that both R. and I are non-University men) and also that I’ve done the job before. So what to do? Down on my knees and get the Lord on me megaphone, I think.  Love, Mike

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. 

7.11.69 - an intruder, a concert, and working in Soho

7.11.69 [handwritten ˗ three letters sent at the same time] 

This letter belongs before this one, dated around the 10th Nov. 

Hullo, hullo, hullo, how are things going with you, then? Hope you’ve settled in quite well back at work etc, and that you’re still feeling okay ˗ and looking after yourself. I wrote to Fred [the cat] a little while back and she assured me she was keeping at least one eye on you, but I know what a lazy wee soul she is. Anyway I received your latest letter listing everyone else’s troubles and none of your own problems, so I can only presume you are okay. Good heavens! I didn’t realise Auntie Rose was still alive ˗ that is presuming it is one of the dwarf group, is it? What made me think she had died I wonder? [By the ‘dwarf group’ I meant the fact that my three great-aunts on my grandfather’s side were all tiny, and got tinier as the years went on.] I hate to think of such an old person having an operation ˗ you always assume that old people aren’t nearly as tough as young ones ˗ and while they don’t look it, they seem to come through some pretty hard knockings-around. [She was actually only 77 at the time, if my records are correct.]

....Last night I got home to find that just a short while before Cathy had

[second handwritten letter]

Arrived home and apparently surprised an intruder. According to her, she was going round the back of the flat to put the bike away, when she saw that ‘Ian’ was standing in his room, with the light on, and her light had been on as well. She didn’t do anything but fiddled around putting the bike to rest. Whoever it was in the house vanished because when she got back inside again (she has to go all the way round the front again) she was alone. The funny thing is how he got out our front door (if he did) because to anyone who doesn’t know it, it plays a trick by first apparently refusing to open more than halfway, and then shutting with a sudden bang when you least expect it. Perhaps he got out the window again ˗ someone had knocked over a little table in Ian’s room, and something else, so he presumably did exist, but it’s all pretty odd. Nothing was missing. We called the police about it, and two friendly young East End-accented boys (no older than any of us) arrived and just sort of took a few notes in case it was tried again. The whole thing was just rather funny really.

On Wednesday David accompanied Alan Opie at the Purcell Room in a ‘solo’ concert. Alan sang a Vaughan Williams cycle (one that I remember rehearsing with Graham Gorton at home), three Wolf Lieder, and then after the interval a Schubert cycle of fourteen songs. [The Vaughan Williams was The House of Life; ; the Wolf, Drei Harfenspieler, and the Schubert, Schwanengesang. Graham Gorton had been one of the cast in the piano tours I did with the NZ Opera Company.] Quite a programme really. The first half was tremendously exciting ˗ it makes a whale of a difference if you know the people involved and have taken notes at a rehearsal (they did one at the flat the other night ˗ with Alan’s fiancee [Kathleen] and me taking notes: means finding out the faults made during rehearsals and endeavouring to find out why they’re made) ˗ and the second half had exciting individual songs, but wasn’t quite so good. I was a bit like a mother hen ˗ though why I should be I don’t really know! ˗ and yet I haven’t enjoyed a concert so much for a good time either. The programme he sang would have taxed a much older and [more] experienced artist, and yet to hear someone comparatively young doing them and occasionally letting himself go completely is a rather fabulous feeling. [Alan was 24 in 1969.] And anyway, both the Schubert and V Williams must have been written when they [the composers] were fairly young, so the feeling is in a way the right one.

Dave’s parents came up, and it was very nice to see them again, and also a lot of familiar faces came to the concert, so it was a very friendly affair. Dave and I arrived home not quite on top of the weather, but awake (just!) at about 1.00 in the morning, and fell into bed.

I went to Die Frau Ohne Schatten again last Monday and it is still terribly exciting.

What a place for all sorts of people London is! At one point today we had in here the male cashier from our sister cinema, the Dilly [also known as the Dilly Cineclub; later it became the Cannon Dilly], and one of the soho ‘locals’. The latter is either in a drunken fury with everyone, or else goes around blessing all, with flowers in his hair, and decorations. He knows all that is to be known about Soho and the people, and for some obscure reason is called ‘Phyllis’! The other guy wears the most modern outrageous clothes, and perfumes! and today had on a white coat with white fur trimmings ˗ about mini-skirt length! Ugh!

I’ll put in some other comments at the beginning of another letter but won't send it yet. Have sent it - see III!

[third handwritten letter]

To continue about the people: have I told you about the buskers around here? (I have a funny feeling that I have): one group comes on a Friday ˗ a flautist (and what a fabulous sound he makes) and his accompanist, a banjo player. The latter is so terrible it’s not true. And he rather spoils the flautist’s music! The other group I see on a Friday morning at Oxford Circus ˗ one plays clarinet, another banjo and another a drummer and they are the swingingest group in London. It’s quite refreshing to come out after a tube ride and hear them echoing up and down Argyll St ˗ the Palladium’s street, incidentally.

Going home on a bus at night can be interesting too: I had two Welshmen sitting behind me one night and one was dead drunk ˗ but all the same insisted on holding a very involved conversation about a crane with his mate. This would have been okay except that he hiccupped every thirty seconds on the dot, and was quite upset in his train of thought each time. The conductress on the bus turned up again the next night going home and said she thought this guy was going to be sick all over me any minute.

About two or three nights later I was reaching my stop on the way home, when the man behind me sneezed and was sick all over ˗ including some of my suit! Poor guy. I didn’t know what to do about him ˗ whether to just leave him there with the conductor or what! There wasn’t much I could do really, short of inviting him to come and clean himself up at home.

Did I tell you about the night there was a fight upstairs on the bus? Yes, I think now that I did (the flute player and his mate were outside just now ˗ they play Elizabethan Serenade when they come to a certain corner of the piece they go in different directions ˗ it’s very funny really. And they also just played Eton Boating Song and at one stage the banjo player went shooting off in a completely different key!

The people that come into the cinema are a pretty varied lot: your lonely old men (and lonely young ones, too), your tired businessman (he does exist), the boys out on the town for the night, your country boys, the bully boys who seem to think it’s a necessary part of their living, the young kids who are just curious perhaps, the ones who just don’t know how to get on with their wives, or their lives, or both. Hazel said once that they’re all people who can’t get on with women in their normal lives, but it seems to me that this is too great a generalization for the variety that comes in. Anyway, it gives me an opportunity to cheer up quite a few of them, which may be something at least. It certainly does me good to see their faces break into a smile when I sometimes hadn’t thought it possible. Many of them are mere kids really ˗ I’m beginning to feel like a father figure! 

26 Nov '69 - meals and a burglary

26 Nov 69 

Dear Mum, I’m sitting here writing this while waiting for my dinner to cook ˗ mid-day dinner that is, though it’s now about four thirty. I usually have it somewhat earlier than this, at least an hour (!) but don’t have to get along to work today, so I can afford to be a little later. It’s my permanent concoction: I started off very brightly at this flat once I’d got a job, endeavouring to have something new and interesting each day, and above all to eat meat all the time; I think that’s where the trouble may have lain last year, cold wise. Anyway, my ambitious scheme has, as usual, melted down into a day after day recipe that I use, to nobody else’s concern by mine own, which has a basis of braising steak, and turns itself gradually into a sort of stew as the cooking process goes on. The steak, while not the cheapest of meats, is more use, than say chops, which tend to look as though all the meat has been cooked off them by the time they’re ready to eat, and anyway as I only buy a half pound at a time, and this lasts me for two days, or more, depending on whether I actually have time to cook it ˗ some days I have to eat in town ˗ it works out quite economically. I have the occasional chop (pork seems to me the most use as the lamb chops are very meagre here unless you’re willing to buy the whole lamb), and occasionally some mince, but I should be able to eat this favourite recipe for a while yet!

I fry the steak first, only for a few seconds each side though, otherwise I wind up with singularly well-done steak, and then using the same pan, pour some vegetable soup mix, with its water over it, and then gradually (depending on how long it takes to prepare them) add chopped up carrots, potatoes (sliced up), onion, tomatoes, sometimes mushrooms, a bit of curry some days, and anything else that will mix in reasonably well. I cook some greens as well ˗ again much the same ones each day: brussel sprouts ˗ they seem to cook easiest and best ˗ and this makes a lovely big dish; in fact it’s often too much and the leftovers sit in the fridge until I feel like reheating them. (Or else as has happened twice, someone has come in looking hungry and finished it.) So I am surviving quite well thanks.

We’ been waiting for snow for the last week and last night there was a bit of a flurry but it came to nowt. But in the meantime London is slowly freezing to death under his great overhanging cold.

...do you remember I’d said that we’d had an intruder? Well, on Sunday night while there were three of us in the house going to bed ˗ would be believe? ˗ some twerp opened our front bathroom window, and presumably because he couldn’t get it further than six inches open, pinched all, or most, of the stuff off the windowsill. This being a very wide sill, and because we haven’t got a cabinet, all the boys’ toilet gear is stored there as well as some of the girls’ stuff. David had been away for the weekend and so his stuff wasn’t there this time, but the blasted burglar pinched my toilet bag whole with all my shaving gear and a variety of other things in it, as well as other odds and ends that were lying about. No great loss of course, except to my convenience, and my sentiment: I think the razor was the only one I’ve ever had and the little blue nail brush and that plastic black comb both went too. Rather upsetting really, but what can you do?

We rang up the estate agents and they’ve given us the go ahead to fix proper locks on all the windows, but it’s a bit late of course. I went down to Woolworths and restocked and this was quite expensive to do all in one go. I haven’t bought another bag of course ˗ little point unless I’m going away somewhere special. The trouble as well was that it came in the same pay as the one I’d sent three quid out of for Francisco ˗ I haven’t had a thing but it must be due ˗ oh, yes, I said to her to send the receipt to you in your name ˗ it’s more use to you than me. And also I’d just sent a parcel off to Korea for him ˗ at long last ˗ and this had set me back a touch more than I expected.

What am I going to get you for Christmas? The time is getting shorter and I haven’t even started to think about it yet. The Crowls by the way are definitely going to move, did I say? Mavis is on the verge of a state of nervous collapse apparently, and the doctor said they’ve got to separate her and Nina, for the former’s health’s sake. So things are a bit gloomy up there just now: I haven’t spoken to Reg since the weekend, but he sounded older than usual by some years, and not happy at all.

I went and filled in for a rehearsal for Dave on Sunday ˗ a children’s choir doing modern music; good grief they’re fantastic; I felt very inadequate, but fortunately wasn’t called upon to do anything especially awkward. The kids (ranging from under ten to late teens) have marvellous senses of pitch; they were singing stuff that was a semitone apart with ease. Better go; my meal is about to bubble all over the .....

Love Mike. 

3.10.69 - Trojans again, and more

3.10.69

Dear Mum, I haven’t heard any more from you about your state of health, but I won’t send this until tomorrow by which time perhaps another letter may have arrived. It seems unlikely that anything disastrous has happened to you ˗ apart from perhaps turning a few more shades of the spectrum, just for variety’s sake (chameleon Crowl!) ˗ otherwise no doubt I would have heard from someone. I suspect you’re up to your old tricks again, and have been organising games evenings, and Bingo parties and races up and down the ward (handicap for those in wheelchairs?). Anyway, seriously, I do hope you’re well onto the recovery list and don’t intend going back to that hospital again, however much you may enjoy yourself while you are there!

I had two days off at the beginning of the week, as I have a feeling I already told you, and on the second evening, on David’s suggestion, I went down to Covent Garden and stood outside to see if I could get a seat that was being returned; people often sell them directly on the street it seems when someone has decided not to come or can’t. I picked up a seat in the lower slips which is on the side of the horseshoe that the auditorium consists of. It means that you have to lean forward all night in order to see, and that you can’t always see the side of the stage that you’re actually on, but it has the advantage of being over the orchestra, and consequently you can hear every note that is sung, and see the people’s faces. This last is quite something, because when you sit in the back of the amphitheatre, where at least you can see all the stage, you can barely see what sort of expression people have on their faces.

Peter Glossop

For the first time I enjoyed the singing of Peter Glossop, who always makes a beautiful sound but doesn’t seem to put any heart in it. It would seem however, that you need to be that much closer to him to appreciate just what he is doing. [Covent Garden was a huge space for singers to fill, after all, especially over the top of an orchestra, but Glossop had an illustrious career there for all that.]

The opera was The Trojans again (this time with everything in its proper sequence) and it really is a fabulous piece. Even though the first act goes on for an hour and a half, and the second (in the Garden’s arrangement of it) for over another hour and the last for about 52 minutes. You’re never bored with it ˗ it has tremendous variety, even though this has the tendency not to make it all of a piece; it seems to work, for me anyway.

From where I was sitting I could see the six harps (!) that were positioned in one of the boxes on the lowest level opposite. They are used (in the most original idea practically, in the opera) as accompaniment to the women of Troy who are singing a song of defiance against the men who’ve come out of the horse. Harps don’t sound quite like the thing for defiant music, but the tremendous buoyancy of the song, and the snatches of wind and strings with it, make ia really foot thumping piece.

Heather Begg is in the opera, in a fairly large minor role, and does it fairly well I think, though David has some objections to make about the way she sings the lower notes which are too low for her comfortably I’m sure. [Heather Begg was a NZ mezzo, who toured in Die Fledermaus with the NZ Opera Company, when I worked as a repetiteur on the production.]

The woman playing Dido, Josephine Veasey, was indisposed on Tuesday, and we had Janet Baker singing the role ˗ in English, with everybody else doing it in French. It was only due to the sheer expertise and sincerity of everybody that it came off ˗ and I rather think I prefer Baker; she has exactly the right sort of voice for it, though no doubt Veasey will grow into the part, and eventually manage to sing it as well as Baker now does. The latter did it in Scotland for Scottish Opera, who were actually the first to do the thing complete anywhere, even though it was in English.

Peter, David’s brother, came up to see it and stayed on for the last couple of days. He’s hitching back this morning. 

I’ve had a bit of a raw throat over the last day or so, so I registered myself with the local Jewish doctor this morning, and he’s given me some penicillin tablets to take. He was very overriding in the nicest possible way ˗ I also asked if there was anything could be done to prevent my colds, and he said there was nothing could be done, and that it was all fairy tales that there was any sort of preventive! He was fairly pleasant though, otherwise. The only thing I can do about colds I think is to make sure I eat well. Did I tell you I went back to the Centre the other day, and had a meal there? It was tremendously gluey, and not very filling somehow. I think I cook as well. Anyway, I’m eating satisfactorily all the time, so we’ll see how we cope. I thought I should see about this throat though before it went any further ˗ I left it so long last time, remember, and was barely able to breathe in the end. [I’m not sure if this is referring to something that happened in England, or to the time when I was touring with the NZ Opera and conked out for over a day as the result of a throat infection. Some of the other members of the orchestra came looking for me at my boarding house because they were so worried when I didn’t turn up for a performance.]

Moneywise things are going well took, because apart from the money that is owed me (the agents for the last flat have only just sent me a cheque for our deposit ˗ two months after we left!, and after a considerable number of phone calls and letters from me. They’re so pathetic and unbusinesslike). I was paid nearly thirteen pounds for last week, even though I was only there three days ˗ true, I did work from ten in the morning till eleven at night each day, but I didn’t expect that it would be much above my basic wage. Life itself has been rather complex lately, and I’ve spent this week trying to sort out my love affairs! With a bit of luck I’ll know where I stand next week, so I may be able to elaborate a bit on the subject then. Anyway, get well, lots of love, Mike.

P.S. Got your being better letter. What on earth did they do to your throat? Keep up the good work anyway. [If memory serves me right the doctors had to cut into her throat for some reason, and after that she claimed she could never sing, something she’d always done around the house.]

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

12.9.69 - more about the job

12.9.69 [handwritten]

Dear Mum, Well, well, the woman who was supposed to have come to take over from me seems to have changed her mind ˗ whether she’ll change it again or not I don’t know ˗ shouldn’t think so, but you never know. Anyway, at the moment, I’m on the full payroll, so they tell me (‘they’ being the Relief Manager who seems to know as much about it as anyone else), and all seems to be right ˗ except that it’s damned hard work! You’d never believe it; I guess it’s the hours. Anyway, I’m getting used to it and seem to be coping. This week I’m earning two whole days of cash I didn’t expect, so!

I’ve asked about the Edinburgh business and even that seems to be no problem. [I’m not sure if this means them letting me have time off to go to Edinburgh.] We’re still losing money ˗ to a variety of amounts, but until they get an adequate system, they can’t really tell who’s fault it is! I did put one pound in the other night as I had a horrid suspicion that I’d given away too much in change but otherwise they take it out of petty cash. Anyway, they’re making a hell of a lot of money ˗ the new film which started yesterday has been bringing twice as many people and we were fairly busy before!! The odd minute or two of it that I’ve seen don’t seem to be any better than those odd minutes in the previous week! [To go to the toilet, as I recall, staff had to go past the open cinema door, so glimpsing the movies wasn't uncommon.]

Berwick St Market, today.
Courtesy of Positive Dialogues

Moneywise I seem to be okay ˗ I actually put some cash in the bank this week. Yesterday I bought myself two ties ˗ equally colourful and bright as the 30/- one, but 27/6 cheaper, each! I got them in the Berwick St market, just round the corner from the cinema ˗ like a miniature Petticoat Lane. I’d better go back to work ˗ it’s my half hour break, and I’m writing this in a little Sandwich Bar down the road.

Later. Actually I seemed still to have some break left so I had an apple and talked to one of the ticket collectors. Remember how I said I had got some food off the ticket collectors ˗ apparently as gifts ˗ well, they asked me for it [the money, presumably], in each case, even though when I’d previously offered they’d refused!! Odd, isn’t it?

We all seem to be getting on well at the flat ˗ now that David has got all his stuff in, it’s really looking lived in. Not that any place I go to doesn’t; put Crowl in a room five minutes and he’ll seem to be at home!

Dave, the Trinidaddy doorman, here, has nothing to do but stand all night ˗ and he sez he doesn’t get bored, but spends the time sorting out his problems, and just looking at the passersby. Admittedly it is interesting, though I still like to have something to do. The variety of customers we get in here is quite surprising ˗ they’re not in the least all of a ‘type’. You’ll never be able to read this, I think! Love, Mike

P.S. Tonight, we tried a new system and tonight we balanced!

6.9.69 - more on the new job

6.9.69 [handwritten]

Dear Mum, just got your letter about Kevin’s visit. I had asked him if he’d go and see you ˗ but I was surprised that (a) he did so soon and (b) that he stayed so long. Did you think he’d changed much? I suppose the mere fact of the above shows that he has ˗ and  didn’t he dislike cats before?? I wonder if Fred actually remembered him ˗ they’ve certainly met before.

Though it’s only the late afternoon I’m working and have been since about 11.45 at the Cinema. One of the day cashiers is sick so I got an emergency call this morning ˗ just after I’d bought myself some steak for the next two days. I left a letter for David who arrives today to help himself to it if he wants but I doubt if he will.

We never all seem to be together in that flat ˗ today will be one of the few occasions so far, but tomorrow Angela goes on holiday back to her home so we’ll be back to four again ˗ or five rather; we’ve had a permanent guest ever since I’ve been back from Hastings. He does contribute to the upkeep so I suppose that’s something.

The job is going along and though it’s six hours a night, the time does pass fairly quickly. I’ve got to work through till 10.00 tonight ˗ time and a half for the day part of it ˗ but it’s still a hell of a long time. And possibly tomorrow as well.

The mixture of people there continues to fascinate me ˗ the doorman is from Trinidad, a European, but he has the native accent. There’s an Irish night ticket lady, and another cashier is Irish (with Maltese and Italian parents), another doorman grew up in NZ! What a place! I still don’t know whether I have a job after the 15th, but I’m not greatly concerning myself.

Last night (a night off) we got a call at the flat from Hazel to say that a man had approached her outsider her present flat, and had so upset her that she’d told him her flat number and all! She wanted some company in case he did arrive and caused any more trouble so Ian and I went over. The man never showed up ˗ he’d said he was a film actor! ˗ but Hazel gave us a meal to compensate for calling us over for nothing! She’s quite mad, but marvellously sweet. We had a very enjoyable and relaxing evening really, so it was rather pleasant after all.

Must go back to work ˗ and leave this Italian restaurant, where someone in the kitchen seems to have a bad case of grumps. There’s a great palaver going on out back.

Later. What nice people they are that work here! On Saturday I think it was one of the ticket collector girls went out and bought me a sandwich and ‘forgot’ to tell me how much it was, and tonight someone has gone into the baker’s behind the theatre and bought me a Danish pastry ˗ and won’t take anything ˗ what fatal fascination have I that people want to buy me food all the time!!

Have I told you I bought a (cheap) camera yesterday. Might at long last get some pictures of the sort of places I inhabit.  Love, Mike

18.8.69 - Back to London

18.8.69 [handwritten] Back at Bethune Rd

Came home today to a bonanza of letters from you, and also Korea, and the Home Office (I’m now free to stay here, apparently for an unspecified length of time) and a long overdue postcard from Michael T in Rome ˗ I’d seen him back in London before I left! I’m very pleased to hear that you’re doing so well, and I was quite delighted with the slightly ‘droopy’ letter of the 12th! Sorry that you weren’t sure what to do with the mail ˗ I did get two letters (I think that was all) in Hastings, via the flat, but the others might have all arrived here after the date when I said not to send anymore on. It’s great that, as usual, you’re making so many friends and seeing all those others you haven’t seen for years. Have you had that race down the Ward yet? Or are you leaving such trivial things to those who are fairly new to this hospital business?

The flat here has started to look quite lived in ˗ I was quite glad not to have had to go through the transition period of getting everything into place once the others moved in.

My foot, I’m afraid, is misbehaving somewhat though it can hardly be expected not to be upset after what I did to it yesterday. As it was the last day, I went in twice (in the water, sorry) and almost ran on it. The result was, naturally, that I could barely walk on it when we finally got home and it’s been feeling fairly tired all day today.

Mrs S fell flat on her face going to work the other morning (she works three days a week in a typing office) and has a chin slowly going purple. She's really very sweet and we get on very well. I was quite sorry to leave this morning in fact, though I had thought, up till then, how nice it would be to get back to London again. I’ve been invited back again anytime ˗ which seems a fair enough criterion, doesn’t it? [More to the point it was extremely generous, since I doubt that I contributed anything to my board while I stayed there!]

If my foot clears up sufficiently to be able to walk comfortably before the end of the week I’ll try and get a job. I don’t know if I’ve already said I’m thinking of trying a job working front-of-house in some theatre ˗ that way I should have quite a bit of the day free to study in. It seems to be full of disadvantages ˗ there’s so much I won’t be able to see, but I can’t see any other way of working. If I get thoroughly fed up I’ll just have to try something else.

Keep getting well, Love, Mike. 

16.8.69 - travel and some foot damage

16.8.69 [handwritten]

Dear Mum, I’m presuming that you’ve written again since your last letter and I hope it contains good news about the ops. The thing is I’m not yet back in London ˗ will be next Monday ˗ and as I said to the others at the flat not to forward any mail after Wednesday, I’ve now made things a bit awkward because I can’t keep up with the news. I was invited to stay over yet a third weekend, rather than go back to London, and so I accepted. But I definitely must get back on Monday in order to see Kevin before he goes. I’ve decided I won’t go to Belgium with him ˗ basically because I’ve not yet heard from the Home Office; they still have my passport in fact, and as I have no way of knowing whether it will now be returned in time I don’t think it’s worth the fuss. [This, I think, was to get a certificate of patriality - now called a Certificate of Entitlement - so I could stay on in the UK, my father being English.] I wrote off and cancelled the tickets, so I hope everything sorts itself out there. Reg said he’d let me know if anything arrived from either the Home Office or the Bank of NZ (where the travel arrangements were being made) by phone, and last night he called to say that he’d received a letter from the Bank addressed to Mr Flaherty! Honestly the amount of time wasted over carelessness like this here is phenomenal. As I’d already written off to cancel the tickets I hope that all that will work out okay.

Harbour Arm, Hastings
courtesy gofishing,uk

The weather here is only today returning to its former glorious self ˗ we’ve had two days of very miserable, though mild weather ˗ and I’m sitting on the pebbles here watching the other two dry off. I didn’t go in because on Wednesday evening we met up with Paul again, and prior to going for a drink with him went out on the old rock Harbour Arm. Coming back off it I jumped down off one rock onto another, and either through being over-cautious, or else thinking that the distance was greater than it was I gave my whole left side a terrific jolt, right through my body. Fortunately the only apparent damage done was to my left foot, and though it seemed okay it got progressively stiffer and sore as the evening went on, so that finally I was in difficulty walking. It was a little less bad the next morning but I went to the doctor just the same. He only prodded around my toes and instep, taking the usual practitioner’s delight in finding the tender spots, and declared that possibly it was a little dislocated, but unlikely to be anything serious. Anyway, he was nice enough I suppose, but probably thought I was making a fuss about nothing. I was glad to have gone because at least it calmed any thoughts of its being something really nasty. It's today walkable on, but this causes it to ache rather much (up till now I’ve been limping around ˗ doubt that does it much good) but I guess it’s improving all right.

The sea looks strange here: it’s artificial somehow. Because the sky merges into it ˗ they’re both very grey at the horizon ˗ the end of [it] doesn’t seem far away and it looks as though the people are swimming in a gorgeously designed (and rather enormous) bath. And the waves are provided by some mechanical means. They’re far too gentle to belong to Mother Nature! Get well, love, Mike.

(P.S. I got Mrs S some flowers today ˗ they’ll arrive on Monday, I trust.)

9.8.69 - Still in Hastings

9.8.69

Dear Mum, Just a small growl that I should have put in before: what is the use of your getting $2 extra a week Sick Benefit if you turn round and give it to me? All right, so you’ve discovered that you can now get $2 Postal Notes, but that’s no excuse to give twice as much as usual to me! As it is I left you with quite a bit to pay for insurance and building society and TV (okay, so you took the latter two over ˗ that’s not the point) and yet you’re still showering money on me week by week. It’s very naughty. Sorry to start off like that and I hope this won’t arrive to spite me just on the day you have an operation or summat, but please do look after yourself. I don’t especially want you to wind up in the poor house. Let me know, when you feel like, how things are going for you, and I’ll keep doing the little I can here.

I’m still being well and truly looked after by Mrs Syrus (particularly) ˗ I haven’t had such a good lot of eating since I left home ˗ except perhaps at the Crowls at Christmas. And we get on fine. Mr Syrus talks to me like another son, and Mrs treats me like one. I’ve been invited to stay on for another week ˗ “if I want to”!! What an invitation.

We’ve been going on the beach at low tide the last couple of days ˗ this way you only get pebbles on the beach and not in the water ˗ although today we got nasty little cuts on our legs ˗ I stepped on a very sharp ledge of rock and came out of the water with blood dripping from half a dozen nicks and scratches!

We had another David-friend with us today: Michael Keenan ˗ a Catholic, would you believe ˗ a rather strange lad, very tall and thin, with a tiresomely quiet voice ˗ though he’s fairly pleasant if a little vague as a person. 

The Powys family

We went for a walk today amongst the Saturday morning shoppers ˗ one shop is selling psychedelically-coloured underpants ˗ I was tempted to buy a pair (I do need ‘em). We went into a bookshop (secondhand and new) and while in there, I noticed how many books this man (an Irishman with a beard, and short and tubby) had by people called Powys. I said I’d never heard of them and thought it strange he should stock so many. Apparently he’s an agent for them and sells them all over the world. So in the end I bought one for interest’s sake ˗ it seems he may be related anyway, the name outside the shop is Powys! There are four brothers and a sister-in-law, all authors, and at least one has made the Penguin Classics series, so they must be reasonably well-known.

So, keep being cheerful, and I’ll keep praying. Love, Mike.

7/8.8.69 - Alistair's wedding

7/8.8.69 [handwritten]

Dear Mum. Well, well ˗ this is the third day I’ve said to myself I must write properly to you ˗ I only posted a postcard today that I wrote last Monday ˗ but because we’ve spent so much time doing all sorts of things I’ve not had a minute really to spare. The weather has been constantly fabulous and I look more like a Red Indian than a Paleface.

Alistair’s wedding went off very well ˗ the reception was held at Woking, about 20-30 miles from London, at the house of Imogen’s parents, a large country house place with a magnificent flat garden with carefully looked-after shrubs and bushes, and far enough from Woking proper for it to be peaceful. The day, which started out as overcast, became very hot and sultry and all the younger men dispensed with their coats very quickly. I wore my old suit, but helped it on its weary way with a fabulous tie I bought a while back. This seemed to make me acceptable amongst all the superbly dressed people. Imogen’s family seem to be pretty well-off, and so, many of the relations were dressed in considerable finery. There was champagne flowing in all directions, and everybody was in high spirits until the heat quietened them down. Alistair had a gorgeous waistcoat on (he must have been very hot) that Imogen had made out of some furnishing material; it was all gold and bright and green. Imogen was in a white mini-skirt with gold trimmings and with her hair in a sort of Regency fashion. Alistair had composed an Epithalamium (a wedding piece they tell me) for the day based on the usual wedding march, and full of musical quotations, which was written for available forces ˗ mainly his Nottingham University friends ˗ which included David Syrus on piano, [plus] oboe, clarinet, bassoon, basset horn (his father-in-law) and several strings.

The reception broke up about 3.30 and David and I headed back to London, where because we had such a long time to fill in we went and saw A Night at the Opera (at the Station Cinema) ˗ me for the fourth or fifth time! [I must be exaggerating about this; I don’t know how I would have seen it this often.] Then on to Hastings, which is a combination of a seaside resort (unpleasant), a hilly town (pleasant), lots of parks (delightful), an old town (very quaint), and a gorgeous surrounding countryside. The beach, unfortunately, is another one of those pebble ones, although we did go out to Camber yesterday where it is all sand.

Mr Syrus is a dear old shoe shop owner of sixty-six, and Mrs S is from Sheffield, in the North, originally, and very easy-going, a good cook, very motherly (and though it’s perhaps a little hard on Mavis ˗ an efficient housekeeper without being unnecessarily tidy). Peter, David’s younger brother ˗ he’s twenty ˗ is another student musician, rather more practical than David (and a bit lazier ˗ but all young people are!) and very easy to get on with. Last, there’s Scamp ˗ their eight-year-old cat. Love, Mike. 

8.8.69 - Holidaying in Hastings

8.8.69 [Handwritten, in Hastings]

You dear old thing! I just got your non-moany letter about the Rolling Stones. What are we going to do with you? You poor old soul. And you won’t even have me to come in and see you when you don’t feel like seeing anybody...! David [Syrus] says that you’ll be first on the transplant list for kidneys - trust you to be different! All this semi-jocularity does conceal some concern however, and I hope you won’t have any more problems once this lot is over. Anyway, I’m sure all my deputies will keep an eye on you. [I assume this was another reference to my mother having gallstones.]

I’m writing this on the beach actually, sitting on those ridiculous pebbles they have on most of the coasts here. I’m getting used to them, I guess, though I can’t run casually over them the way David does. At least this time I haven’t wound up with just blue bruises on the undersides of my feet. There’s a lovely golden labrador tearing about the beach here ˗ the pebbles don’t seem to worry her unduly! She seems to belong to a perpetually grinning boy of fourteen or so who’s sitting close by.

Over the last few days I’ve met two of David’s friends, one of whom, Paul, is going out to Australia, pretty definitely, some time about September, to teach. Probably in Canberra. I’ve never seen anyone with quite so jaunty a step, but he isn’t actually a very jaunty person. He apparently failed an important Varsity exam, and as a result would get a little more money in a teaching post here than the average teacher from a Training College who hasn’t gone to Varsity. [I think I mean he '\would have got more money.' if he hadn't failed.] Anyway, he’s been working on the buses in Hastings for the last year or so because he hasn’t been satisfied with what they’ve offered him in teaching. The other boy, Chris, has an artistic mother who does stain-glassed [corrected in the letter to ‘stained-glass] windows mainly, it seems. He has rather an inferiority complex because of her, though David says he’s a pretty good cellist, and seems very nervy.

We’ve just been in the sea, which is rather boisterous and pretty cold. There’s more wind around than usual today too. I haven’t been wearing my watch down to the beach since I’ve been here, though I must have done the first day we were out as the skin on the place where the watch and strap normally are is pink (but a deep pink) and not at all like the rest of my skin. It’s very tender too. I hope it will be all right, but I let it calm down a little yesterday, by wearing the watch again, and not letting the sun at it. In fact we didn’t go near the sea yesterday. I for one felt that I was burning to a cinder, and wanted to give myself a break from the overall suntanning I’d been having. We went for quite a long walk out of the north of the town, through fields and bush, and it was really fabulously relaxing. When we went to Camber, we had to go via Rye (the town where the notorious Dr Syn had his headquarters) and we had a look at it. (Hastings has a lot of old houses in its ‘old town’ part, but no cobbles.)

We played golf here the other evening ˗ on a revoltingly hilly course ˗ Pete [David’s brother] and I were 100, David 102. But the views during the game made it well worthwhile. Dave and I are wending our way through the Wagner Ring cycle (nineteen LPs!!) ˗ he got the Solti recording set cheap recently. There really is a lot of fabulous music in these works, and for all his faults, he certainly knew what he was about. When you consider these four operas were written over twenty-four years ˗ it’s amazing how well they hang together and to each other.

[ Postscript written along the edge of the opening paragraph - somewhat reminiscent of my father’s approach to making the most of all available space in a letter.]

I’ll keep on praying for you ˗ though I’m sure the Good Lord has you down on his special list already - love, Mike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15.7.69 Changing flats

15.7.69

Well, well, and hullo. (15th July). Hope you are still recovering properly like a good wee girl. I’ve had Fred’s alter ego in here twice just lately ˗ a cat that is growing up to look like Fred. At least as I remember her. (Do you know in this day and age of photos I don’t possess a single one of you! And I’ve got three of Francisco, whom I’ve never seen.[This was a Korean orphan boy I sponsored for a few years.] Send me one, will you? Even if you have to have it especially taken with all the rest of the Hannagan clan.) This cat is terribly cheeky and walks in whenever I have the back door open and food cooking. I was in the middle of a Sunday meal one weekend, and suddenly felt something rub across my leg ˗ only on this occasion the door wasn’t even open. What a fright. She’d come in an open window! But she’s very like Fred, and I enjoy her company.

Well, several things have happened of interest. To go backwards, today, Hazel and I received a summons to go and see Mr Kentish after one of the rehearsals. Well, remember that TV business that we had going on at the Centre a while back? And how I was shot sitting doing absolutely nothing? Well, they want the people who appeared in that scene to go to Edinburgh in September to shoot a scene up there as a follow-up and they pay! Everything. Great great great.

On Sunday night I went up to town and after going to Church in the evening at six at my little French church off Leicester Square (Mass in French ˗ and sermon!) (it’s a beautiful church actually built with the same sort of material as in Moran Chapel, but about six times as big, right next to a cinema currently showing a hit film on Lesbians.) [Moran Chapel is/was in the centre of Dunedin, in the Octagon: a tiny place that might hold twenty people.] (I’ll have to get a new ribbon.) (Hold on...) [I changed the fading ribbon to an equally faded red one; almost impossible to read.]

As I was saying, I met up with David and Hazel and Dave’s flatmate John, and a friend of Hazel’s called Kathy Bird. And it turned out that Kathy had found a flat which she wanted to move into but found that she wasn’t going to have enough people ˗ again someone had opted out at the last minute. I said that if David agreed (Syrus, that is ˗ the one I was to share a flat with) it might be suitable for us to come in on. It’s a place with room for five people and six if wanted. So anyway last night David and I went out to look at it (after David had said he liked the idea ˗ I’ll still be going down to Hastings though, I think; I don’t see any reason not to see a bit more of the place) and it’s massive ˗ five bedrooms, a large lounge, a kitchen, bathroom, and lots of funny little off rooms, that don’t seem to have any purpose in life, and a private garden which at the moment looks fabulous. It’s on the ground floor of an old three-storeyed house, and the place has so many doors ˗ most of the rooms have two (?) that it looks like the set of a French farce! It’s not actually ours yet, but Kathy and I are going in tomorrow to look at it, so I’ll not finish this until it’s definite and then if it is you can start addressing mail there. [A woman lived upstairs on her own, as I recall, which meant she must have had an enormous amount of space. As for most of the rooms having two doors; I think this is nonsense. Mine did, but not the rest, as I recall. ]

Tomorrow night I go to NZ House near Piccadilly to a reception being held by the High Commissioner for NZ for James Robertson and Kiri [te Kanawa] before they go to NZ for Carmen. [A recording of this production is available on You Tube, though for video there are only still shots.]

Last night before going to see the flat David and I had tea at Alistair’s house (which he’s renting prior to getting married); actually Dave lives there too at the moment; and very nice place it is. An old three-storey place too, semi-detached, which means that you go up and down all the time to get anywhere, and that it’s rather narrow, but it’s also very cosy and comfy. And the sort of place that anyone would be happy in let alone newlyweds.

I’ll leave the rest of this till tomorrow.

Tomorrow is now here and this morning we went up to the agents near Oxford Circus and filled out an application for the flat. Now they’ve got to send away for three references from each of us, which will take about a week. I only hope that if they do accept us they don’t take too long about it, because the date they seem to think we should go in is about three days after I’m supposed to have left here!

This evening I went up to NZ House (after spending the entire day mucking around doing nothing at all in London ˗ it has been so hot that it’s impossible to do anything; a real muggy sort of heat, which is killing the English. I sat in St James Park this arvo doing absolutely nothing except watching the people go by for about two hours ˗ even went to the all cartoon show to fill in time for an hour ˗ it was cooler, and anyway they had a Laurel and Hardy, as well as part twelve of one of those old serials) for this reception for Robertson and Kiri, and it was pretty deadly and I didn’t really meet anyone new.

Our production of Il Tabarro promises to be really something. James conducted it while I played for a rehearsal the other day, and didn’t even complain about my playing in any way. A change. But as a show it should be fabulous ˗ and will knock the audience for six.  Ande Anderson, who is producing, is putting rather more into it than perhaps he would normally, because the situation rather parallels a marital situation he’s been involved in (he hasn’t said so, but it’s obvious from the knowledgeable way he speaks about the feelings of the characters involved.) [I suspect someone amongst the students suggested this and it became a reality.] I’ll be playing the celesta in the actual performances, which doesn’t mean much, as neither Schicchi nor Tabarro have much for the instrument. [Handwritten] That’s all for now. See ya, love Mike.