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.

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