30.9.69
Dear Mum, just got your letter in which you mention your
many history-making exploits. I hope while you’re concentrating on making
history that you’re also concentrating on getting well. I don’t know if you
will still be in there when you get this ˗ I’ll send it to the hospital anyway,
and put a wee note on it where to send it if you’ve gone home by this time. Glad
to hear however that as usual you’re enjoying yourself thoroughly, though I do
think it’s about time they found someone else to pick on for their experiments
˗ they always seem to find you such an interesting case, don’t they? Wonder why
you’ve been given so many little peculiarities? Glad to see also that everyone is
looking after you so well; funny, isn’t it, how both you and I seem to be
considered quite helpless and everyone seems to rush to help. I often have dear
old ladies helping me to buy things in shops, and others seem to find a good
old sounding board in me for all their troubles. I know more about complete
strangers’ troubles than anybody else’s! It’s nice also that you’re in hospital
in the Spring; you’ll be able to see all
the trees and flowers coming out into bloom from your own private window.
We’ve had
our first touch of Winter today; I was staying overnight at Mike’s (it was his
birthday yesterday, and he invited me around for a meal ˗ and very nice it was
too, and we just spent a very quiet evening sounding like two
under-under-graduates according to Lindsay!) and when I went last night it was
quite pleasant and mild, and I only had a jacket on over my shirt. This morning
however there was a distinct chill in the air ˗ even though the sun is still
shining quite pleasantly, and it looks very pleasant as long as you’re indoors,
but I was feeling a little like a slightly refrigerated person by the time I got
home.
I don’t
think I told you any more about Edinburgh,
did it? (I’ve written to Hazel who is away at the moment, and I think it was
her that I told the rest of the story to.) Anyway on Wednesday morning when we
were supposed to work solidly for about three and a half hours we arrived and
rehearsed (after about half an hour’s wait) with the cameras, and then went and
sat about and then were made up and then sat about, and then filmed it quite
casually in about ten minutes! And it was apparently so right (a piece of
commentary had to be fitted over the last part of our performance and it was so
well timed that it ended exactly as we did!) that we didn’t even have to do it
again, which they’d expected to. I think they felt they wouldn’t get it right
again if they did do it.
So we
finished quite early in the day, and after we had a huge salad each in a place
that Ande Anderson (the producer) knows, we went our separate ways, and I wandered
off to see some more of the place that I hadn’t yet taken in. I wandered around
the East end of the town, I think, and this brought me to Holyrood House [Palace] eventually, which I investigated.
Unfortunately they didn’t really show very much of it to us ˗ only about one
floor, out of three or four, and not all of that I suspect. Still it was
interesting, though like many other things it no longer exists as it did when
it was first built, and only parts of rooms are as old as the entire
establishment. A ceiling here, a or a door here, or a staircase here. Still the
room where Mary Queen of Scots was having dinner with a couple of friends the
night her secretary Rizzio was murdered about two rooms away is there, and the
spot where he was left dying ˗ though the little private dining room (about as
big as our kitchen!) has a telephone in it these days! And the bed her husband
slept in is still sitting in his room, made up, as though he were just away in
England for the day.
There are
lots of fascinating little curiosities, and even more that we couldn’t see, I think
˗ you seem to have to go around with one of the guides who only shows you what they
think is necessary. Though they are fairly knowledgeable about the place, and
conversation with them is rather more fascinating than actually listening to
the talk, which leaves dozens of little details out.
The setting
for the House (like that of the Castle, which had about the magnificent setting
possible on top of a sheer rock) is fabulous. It’s at the other end of the
Royal Mile ˗ walk straight up the road and you eventually come to the Castle
gates ˗ and is sort of the end of the world; all at the back of it is a great
roll of hills, with a huge scar down the side of the closest. I first saw the
House from above, in the sort of park area (Calton Hill ˗ correct spelling
incidentally) which is full of overpowering monuments to long forgotten leaders
of the town, and up there you can really see the setting. Everything is heavily
built in Edinburgh; one imagines it would take an atom bomb just to shake the
foundations let alone knock it down.
Since I got
back I’ve had to work all the four remaining days of the week; Thursday through
to Sunday, morning noon and night. I was nearly up the wall at the end of it. Fortunately
I’ve had two full days off to compensate. Still, as employers they’re fairly
good, in that I only seem to need to ask for a certain time off and they say,
Oh, I think that can be arranged!
Lots of
love and keep progressing!
