24.2.70 Mostly about the new job

This letter is out of order in these blog posts, but the list of blogs shows where it should fit.

24.2.70 [Typed on both sides of three and a half narrow and short, pale green, sheets of paper]

Dear Mum, I was all set to sit down and write to you and discovered I seem to have run out of air letters, so I hope the look of this didn’t shock you too much. Still no news from the CIB which naturally enough I’m finding a bit distressing. The stage we’re at, at the moment, is that of the girl making up her mind what she thinks of me from the scanty information she has and the shocking photo. Obviously it’s a difficult task! I can’t contact her personally at all until after she has replied to the CIB to say she’ll have an ‘introduction arranged for her’ and then they write to me again, and tell me I can write to her but still through them ˗ Oh! What a complicated business! It’s only after she then replies directly to me that either of us finds out who the other is and where they live! The more I think about it the funnier it seems. I’m glad I went into that like that because it’s shown me the funny side of it that I’d lost sight of. I read a little CTS pamphlet the other day which had a quotation from a poem by Francis Thompson (whom personally I don’t much care for but who seems in this case to have come up with a very nice little saying). It was:

Is my gloom after all
Shade of His hand outstretched caressingly?

which, once you’ve worked out the slightly upside down grammar is rather to the point, though in our usual way we manage to think God is mismanaging things for us instead of probably (quite definitely!) the other way around.

I had Michael T and a girlfriend of his, Mickey, and Kevin Rowlands up to lunch on Sunday afternoon, and though Kevin bought a bottle of vino with him (I had bought one and so had Mike) he doesn’t drink, and so we other three, possibly a little rudely, but....sat round and drank off one bottle ˗ the other two can now wait for another party sometime! He seems a pleasant sort of chap though not a conversationalist to any degree which makes things a little difficult (and Mike wasn’t as co-operative in this department as usual; he’s getting all introspective lately) but we all survived, and he has returned the compliment and I’ll have to wend my way down to his flat (with two other guys and four cats and three dogs!) sometime when he calls to arrange a date. I hope he’s more at home in his own place. There’s not much of the theatrical about him ˗ he strikes me as one of those totally theatre people whom you could still pass on the street and barely notice. He’s tall, a little heavier than that photo Mrs Leslie showed us, and generally quiet. And strangely enough reminds me a lot of Kevin Flaherty. (Have you ever noticed how people of the same name tend to have certain characteristics [in common]? Or am I just making that up to suit my argument? But even in our family at home the various namesakes are all more than a little alike, whether they would necessarily admit it or not.) (Perhaps it’s just what we take from the name: when we meet someone else of the same name as someone we already know we start to look for similarities.)

Well, I started my new job yesterday, with the worst nerves I’ve had in a long while; though it may also have been the fact that I slept very badly the night before. I had thought I’d grown over all that sort of thing, but it would appear not. I certainly wasn’t the only one ˗ even our instructress, a Mrs Bullitt (would you believe?) seemed nervous, which was rather nice. She’s nothing that her name might imply; it has rather Dickensian overtones, and one imagines a gaunt upright severe person who has a not a jot of patience with dunderheads. She is, however, a littler lady, about 5’2” or 3” with a pleasant though tired expression and isn’t always quite with what is going on, so that her smile tends to follow after the joke, and after everyone else has laughed. She is inclined to not always quite say what she means though generally the meaning is clear, and only needs verification. That is the classroom Mrs Bullitt. The extra-tutorial Mrs B is even more pleasant, not so tired, taller (?), and ever so slightly livelier. I hesitate to think that it’s because she has been doing the job for a good while, but I suspect that’s the case. She is probably in her late forties, though the classroom Mrs Bullitt seems somewhat older.

Did I tell you that we have seven weeks training before we’re let loose on the public? I think they have to have us at some stage before that but I’m not sure. And we’re paid throughout ˗ though 2/- less for some reason, per week. We spend this time round Cannon St or Wren House, which is opposite St Paul’s. So it’s an area I’ve not really spent a great deal of time in before and it’s rather interesting. One of the other men and myself went for a walk at lunchtime today and went over the London Bridge where they are at present building a new one while the other is shipped, stone by stone, to America. The Tower is five minutes’ walk away, and it’s altogether one of the older parts of London. I go to Liverpool St on a real train, not a tube, from the station three minutes away (instead of ten or twenty as they were before) and it’s 6d cheaper than before, and then walk for about seven minutes down to Cannon St. One could go by the main roads from Liverpool St to C. St, but fortunately the ancient residents of London beat pathways between all these which still exist in the form of one-way alleyways, and by following about four of these down, I save quite a bit of time. They all connect to each other practically, so obviously I’m following in the footsteps of some old Londoner who wasn’t bother to spend his time touring back and forth when he could go direct.

Our class has already dwindled from eleven to eight in the first two days: two of them never arrived and one middle-aged lady just didn’t come back today. The rest of the class consists of two other men (thank God ˗ one poor bloke two weeks ahead of us got stuck by himself in a class of women) (and spends his afternoon teas alone. He seems a nice enough guy, though not bubbling with personality ˗ how cruel can women be? And anyway I thought they were the predatory sex? What are they doing?) [More to the point, perhaps, what on earth am I talking about?] one of whom is probably somewhere along the line of Jewish extraction and is called Jerry Levi, and seems a not too bad guy, married with a couple of kids, thin (don’t be fooled by the two cardigans, his wife, I have no doubt, has made him wear under his shirt) with a wide grin of a mouth, and a smoker’s ˗ a heavy smoker’s ˗ laugh. About 45, let’s say.

The other guy is Larry Boyles (what a name, I ask you?) ˗ huge, weighs sixteen stone, looks about 25 or so, but an Eastender, which means he has a certain non-youthful characteristic. For example, he talks like an old man, seems to find life just a little on the puzzling side, and never manages to hear what you say in quite the way you say it, because like most Eastenders, he assumes what you are going to say and gives the answer to that, when in fact you may have been a little more subtle. Perhaps it’s me ˗ I don’t speak so good, maybe?

The women are two middle-aged buddies (though I suspect they’d never met before yesterday), both divorcees-again-married, both the bright sparks of the company; a quality of their age more than their personalities, since one who is married to an American (previously to a Chinese!) and who has lived around the world for some years has few of the qualities one associates with a well-travelled person, and the other, who used to work at Scotland Yard (and who claimed she’d heard and seen everything there ˗ I felt like telling here where I’d been for the last six months!!) and who has been nicknamed Fuzz, seems only to be a cynic, and doesn’t really the true appreciation of the funny side of life that makes a cynic bearable.

There are two quite young girls (one named Miss Weller, who, being an Eastender, reminds me irresistibly of Sam Weller in Pickwick Papers) and a girl of I suppose twenty-two or so, who is something like a beanstalk in a mini-skirt, with glasses. But everybody is very friendly in that they return your smiles and only laugh at you because they’re glad they didn’t put their foot in it.

The building is very hot in true Civil Service style ˗ though as everybody is at pains to point out, the Post Office is now a Corporation not a Govt. Dept., and I stopped wearing the t-shirt that I had on under my shirt today in order to try and let a little air in. I always thought that 60o was the sort of comfortable temperature but I’ve seldom struck a place that is as cool as that. (The theatres here, particularly the Opera Houses, are horribly hot in winter.)

About your [Bonus] Bond(s) ˗ I hope that you eventually get something out of them ˗ it would be nice for you to be provided with a decent sort of ‘pension’ as it were for your old age. (I mean when you’re pushing one hundred or so!)

About the books: it seems that we’ve nearly got everything sorted out again. Would it seem like very bad manners on my part if sometime in the near future I made up another little list? You could stop two or three of these postal orders you aren’t supposed to be sending me to compensate, couldn’t you? It’s some odds and sods books which I’ll think about; but one or two may come in handy for the teacher’s exam. Doris had a friend of long-standing over here who died recently and left her all his music. Perhaps I should say that he left me and some other pupils all his music, as this is where it seems to be finally ending up. I have bought one lot from her so far for a £1(quite how the economics work out I don’t know) which in fact would have cost me a lot more, secondhand, to buy and even more new. About £10 at least. So I’m glad. And I’ve bought some other music off her that is old stuff she no longer can use, for very minimal amounts, which will come in handy for sightreading and perhaps teaching music.

Remember Margaret from work, at the cinema? We had a huge chat on the last night, when she stayed right through my working hours sitting just to talk. I’ve given her my phone number and she’s already rung me once since ˗ and I told her she must come up for a meal, because for a start she lives on her own. I don’t think there is any danger of things getting involved ˗ I hope not; perhaps I’m a bit thick where women are concerned, but from what she has said (I’ve had a good deal of her history) it seems unlikely that she is interested in me for any other reason than friendship. Friendship in the quite ordinary sense. Oh dear, I hope things won’t be messy. No, I don’t think they will. What’s this? [the last line ran downhill on the page.] Love Mike.

14.3.70 An evening with Jerry

[A bit of a hiatus in terms of carrying on with blogging these old letters...tied up with music rehearsals and performances over the last several weeks.]

14.3.70 [two aerogrammes]

Dear Mum, you’ll be glad to know that the cold seems to have been dealt a blow on the head, in a way I hadn’t quite anticipated: but at least it’s been gotten rid of. I explain how, presently. [Actually I never get round to explaining why!]

You know, it seems to be one of my things in life (I remember Margaret saying that everyone seems to have a particular thing: she says she had never had to worry about money, for instance, it just appeared) to be picking up lame ducks and attempting some sort of repair job; though it’s only in the last couple of years, or even less, that I’ve really been reasonably capable of doing it. [That might have been overstating the case, I think.]

Remember Jimmy Wilson at school? He must have been about the first. Well, you will recall that in my recent letters when I talked about the PO class, I mentioned Jerry Levy? I’m afraid (no, not afraid, but...I don’t know what the word would be) he’s my latest acquisition. He has let drop the occasional hint of some unhappiness at home (he’s 38, has a boy and a girl, and ‘a wife of independent means’ as he puts it) and quite obviously doesn’t have a happy marriage. Anyway, yesterday after work, we finished up at Wren House, getting our lockers etc in order for next week ˗ we will work there in future (right next door to St Paul’s; what more inspiring locale could you have?). Jerry, who normally rushes off, mentioned ultra-casually that I might like to have a cup of coffee if I wasn’t pressed for time? I wasn’t, and so we went to the nearest joint. One thing led to another and we finally spent the whole evening together talking and drinking, and he finished up on half of the bed at the flat here. I slept on the floor on the mattress part of it ˗ quite comfortably; in fact, I suspect I was better off altogether.

 It transpired in the coffee shop, after a little prodding and coaxing from yours truly, that Jerry wasn’t going home that night, again ˗ he’d spent the previous night in some hotel ˗ and he suggested going and having a drink. He was obviously not looking forward to spending the remainder of the evening on his own, and so I said if I could have something to eat I’d have a drink or two. We went to a place still nearby, in the newly-built St Paul’s Piazza or whatever-it-is, and over the meal we got to talking and I got some more out of him. To be fair, he did some prodding and prying of his own, which made me feel less rude (rude? not the word either). But due to this conversation and the ensuing very lengthy one in the St Christopher Wren, just round the corner (it could be very old ˗ it could be very fake) we seemed to discover that we were sort of soul-mates, to put it in an odd way. But do you know what I mean? When you find that someone is quite content to be in your company and to talk and be rude to you and laugh at your jokes and put with all your foibles (while also pointing them out!) and you are equally content to be in his.

At that stage of the evening I hadn’t really felt in the position of assisting his lame-duckness ˗ we were quite on a par, friendship-wise, and just sitting around talking, keeping each other alive. Jerry, it seems, has had a sort of recurring thing where he goes off and leaves his wife ˗ or is told to go (I think the latter often as not), and after a while they somehow come back to each other, through some indefinable ‘x’ factor that holds marriages like his together. On the last bout, he went off to Spain for two months until he was forced to return because he couldn’t get any more work, and he doesn’t know how long he’ll be away this time. He was off to find a bed-sit when I last saw him today. It’s terrible, isn’t it? But it’s nice to know that the Good Lord looks after everybody, really. This guy is no particular believer, or any more good than the next guy, but somehow or other our paths have crossed, and, last night, at least I was able to fill a gap for him.

He’s mad on old films, too, and for much of the time we just talked favourite film scenes. He was amazed that I’d seen so many films that were made before I was born even, and at one stage said, in a sort of grateful way to no one in particular, that he had to meet up with some bloke from 12,000 miles away before he could talk on his own level about a subject like this. It’s all rather incredible, isn’t it really?

I gave up thinking about going home at any particular time in the end, and just let the evening go on unplanned. One of the strangest things of the whole rather strange evening however was when, after I’d been to the loo and had come up the stairs thinking ‘I wonder if he’d sooner come home to the flat and spend the night there; (rather than spend it in a bleak hotel room in Kings Cross as he planned?) and had practically decided that I couldn’t really ask him, he then turned round and asked if he could kip down on the floor at my flat! Now, that is odd. I was very glad he’d asked and naturally said, Yes.

Anyway, after we’d finished up at the C Wren, he suggested going along to the Spanish Bar which is near Leicester Square, just for a last drink, or some similar ridiculous excuse. So we went, and eventually found ourselves in the hot and smoky and atmosphere-laden basement bar: it was as phoney as a film set, and full of real Spaniards and phoney ones. Jerry was one of the phoney ones! He has Spanish ancestry not very far back, and with that and

[second aerogramme]

the recent Spain trip, and the fact that he is quite a linguist: (he has German and French up his sleeve too) he was able to speak quite reasonable Spanish to the people who would talk to him. Actually the atmosphere was quite friendly, and people were talking on the most casual bases. But, for some crazy reason, he was determined that he shouldn’t be an Englishman for the night, and neither should I and I finally wound up being, at his decision, a Norwegian! And the funniest thing was that we had a couple of people on! A little Indo-European man and his Derbyshire girlfriend were the victims ˗ Jerry’s victims I hasten to add; I barely said a word, though I rather put my foot in it. I was not supposed to be able to speak English, and Jerry and I were talking in awkward German as a sort of mutual language (I can’t remember whether he was supposed to be a very linguistic Spaniard at this stage or not) when the girl asked how long I’d been here, thinking no doubt it was strange I hadn’t picked up any English. I said, like a fathead, in a mixture of sort of bad German and bad English, 18 months, and she then said to Jerry, assuming that I wouldn’t understand that it was a bit odd that I hadn’t learned any English in that time ˗ how on earth did I get around? After that I shut up and pretended to be a homesick Norwegian or something, and looked especially gloomy, and Jerry carried on bantering them in Spanish and English and heaven knows what! All extremely mad, and highly improbable, but never mind.

It got fairly late and we were there till nearly closing time in the end. (They do have a sort of cabaret at this place ˗ Spanish dancing and guitar-playing, done on an infinitesimally-raised level, so that you to be six-foot tall to see; but since you don’t pay any special price, this is what you must put with.)

Anyway, Jerry and I wended our way to a bus and eventually got home. By this time he was starting to fall apart quite a lot, which surprised me really, as he seems generally to have bags of energy. We got home and he must have nearly gone berserk trying to figure out who all the people were ˗ it was one of those nights when they all arrived one after the other, and there seemed to be no end to the stream. So finally David and I put him to bed, as it were, and shut up shop. But he kept making me feel as though I was making him a special guest of honour and showering him with riches. I told him to shut up in the end, and he did, pretty well. But in fact I wasn’t really treating him any better than I would have done if Mike had come or someone like that.

To hark, way back, to the lame duck bit; this seems to have come about late in the evening, when he lost some of his verve, and I became sort of father to the child if you see what I mean. So that’s the general picture of our Odyssey (the situation reminds me somewhat of James Joyce’s Ulysses where a young man and a middle-aged man become friendly over the space of one night).

Why do older people get on with me at all? I ought to make them feel out of date or something, shouldn’t I, by the law of the average statistical man? I think though, last night’s happening(s) came about partly by my new policy of trying to be open (at the risk of getting another mess) the same as I did with Margaret (who incidentally hasn’t yet been any bother, and if I have room I may be able to explain why I think this is so). And if it’s going to help somebody through an otherwise miserable and lonely night, I’m glad to do it, because I’ve had the same sort of loneliness myself at times. London is a terrible city for this, and I don’t intend to let it do its damage to anyone if I can help it. (New Policy Ruling Number Four!)

Thanks for your comments on the CIB (not CID, mother!) business. You’re not being old-fashioned in what you say about the financial side of things, though I must say I have the feeling that these days the girl herself contributes more to the marriage that she might have done 20 or 30 years ago, finance-wise. But I don’t rely on that. I must admit to feeling a little too impoverished to even be contemplating such a thing as marriage, but since there is not a great deal I can do about that at present, I can only save as much as possible (more possible in this job ˗ though not when I’ve spent the night drinking!) and remember my promised daily bread. And it does come. I don’t really get too uptight about money matters; whenever I do, I think, This is ridiculous ˗ I’m ten times better off than a lot of folk.

Jerry and I were discussing marriage quite a lot last night actually, though not from this point of view, and it would seem I’m pretty idealistic about certain aspects of it. But I don’t think I’m foolish about it. I know marriage is bloomin’ hard work, and I think I’m prepared for that. 

So! What a funny letter. I hope you don’t think I’m taking up with all sorts of odd people ˗ no, I’m sure you don’t ˗ but helping them helps me, and I’m one of the most incredibly selfish people around!

Rod, one of the flatmates, has a party on here tonight, so I don’t expect much sleep. I think I’ll go up to the laundrette actually! Lots of love, Mike. 

I haven't been able to identify the two pubs mentioned in this post: I think the Christopher Wren may no longer exist, and perhaps the Spanish Bar is now a restaurant. But perhaps not....

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo courtesy of Roger Perriss, flickr.com

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

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

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

PART II

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

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

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

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

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

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

PART III

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

PART IV

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

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

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

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

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

Love Mike. 

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.