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!
