16.1.69 Post-Christmas activities

I started adding these letters I sent from the UK to my mother back in the sixties to the blog some time ago...the last one I added was in May this year. So there's a certain irony/serendipity about the first line of this letter ...

16.1.69

Unending apologies for making you wait so long for a letter, but I really have not an idea where the time has gone.  If I thought I was busy last term – I didn’t know what was coming in this one!  WOW!  The mails have been all up the whop here because I got two aerograms from you on one day last week – dated four days apart. 

Re Reg’s Christmas presents: he got yours prior to Christmas by about a fortnight, and we spent one Sunday morning making a quite detailed trip through the book, along with the other one you sent a couple of years ago, on Dunedin.  I don’t suppose you got my present in time, either, in spite of the airmail, and Mike was telling me he was a bit annoyed because he’d sent stuff way back in October and it only arrived in the New Year.  All the mails were fine at the end – can’t understand them down under.  Thanks for all the Peanuts. 

Kingsley told me this morning a nice bit of news before I went to the Centre – he’d been offered board at a place – one of the Old Hostels in Notting Hill Gate –that’s sort of West – it’s a place where he has his own room he thinks, and they provide full board for £4-10-00 a week.  It means mainly less expense travelling, and his mother won’t be sending him anything more for a while for fares, as she had a heart attack just recently (but seems to be okay) as he’s quite a bit closer by tube to the Guildhall.  Hope he’ll be happy there.  It’s obviously got other advantages: TV, etc, but I wonder if he’ll get much peace.  Anyway, it left me in a bit of a spot because I don’t particularly want to move out of here, inconvenient as it may be in some ways, and I had visions of shifting to a bedsitter or what have you.  He was definitely going, come what may anyway, so I thought when he said could I find someone to share the place: Who would come?  The only person I could think of was David Syrus, one of the other reps, not mentioned in these dispatches for a while, and who I knew lives in one room in North Central or somewhere, and might be glad of a bit more space.  I thought though that he was probably paying less rent, and mightn’t be very agreeable, in view of the way-out-ness of the place.  I put it to him, after a few quick prayers to the Good Lord, and his eyes lit up immediately!  Seems he is actually paying £2-15-00 a week, as well as 1/- for the bathroom, and this was one advantage.  Also it’s that much closer to the Centre, about 20 minutes on his bike, if that, and he has the 3 rooms.  He hasn’t said definitely yet, because, he has paid a month’s rent in advance when he first shifted into his room, and doesn’t know if he’d get it back.  So!  A change is in the air by the looks of it.  Kingsley has to leave by the 25^th, so I may have to have the place to myself for a fortnight or so.  That’s the stop press news. 

Back to the previous weekend.  I haven’t told you about my Worthing trip have I? Kevin and I went down on the Sunday, (after standing on opposite sides of a box notice board waiting for each other for about 20 minutes at Victoria) and – I have told you about this haven’t I?  Sure I have.  Perhaps it’s not so long since I last wrote after all.  I think I’d better work backwards with the news, as I’m not sure now where I left off.

Last night Kevin and I went to Orpheus in the Underworld, which is now in its ninth year revival – it was first performed in ’60, and has toured the world since then.  It was fairly good though a little tired, and obviously an awful lot of the sparkle of the original performances has vanished.

On the previous Sunday, I’d come home in the evening about nine, feeling not to hot, but I thought I was just tired.  However during that night, my head went on fire, and my legs ached something terrible.  This is a symptom as far as I’m aware of one of the 'flus at present in fashion, and though I got up and went to the Centre on Monday – had to do an Angelique rehearsal – I came home early and stayed in bed till Wednesday morning, consuming sort of alternately: oranges, Bovril, and aspirins!  Actually I’d had a headache at the Crowls on Sat, but it had seemed to go off, although I slept terribly on Sat night – worse than I usually do there!  (I just can’t get used to sleeping in hot houses.  Now I just take all the top bedclothes off, except for a couple of blankets, and sleep like that.) (They provide: a hottie, 3 blankets, a heavy eiderdown, two rugs!) I’d gone up to the Crowls on Friday night – at 11.15 (with my uncles’ acquiescence – he didn’t mind at all he said, they always stay up till midnight – they do too – nearly knocks me out the way they go on!) – because originally Mike and Mervyn Jarvis were going to go The Force of Destiny (a new Verdi production) but we couldn’t get in, so we went to the pictures instead!  It was a film called Hot Millions with Peter Ustinov (who also collaborated on the script, and it showed in the dialogue), Robert Morley (in two tiny scenes) and my favourite actress: Maggie Smith.  (Remember The VIPs? She was Rod Taylor’s secretary; and also Desdemona in Olivier’s Othello!) And the first thing Ustinov does in the film, almost, is get on my bus! A no. 15 going to East Ham.  I felt quite proud.  And it’s full of bits of recognisably London, not landmarks, but streets that look very familiar, and even shops.  And there was also a shot in Rome from the top of St Pete’s, which I’d been on!  Yippee!  See it if you can – it’s a ‘take Monica Stokes type’!  [Because my auntie Monica would have laughed throughout.] and don’t let the people leaving at the end let you think it is the end; it’s not quite. 

Anyway, after this, I went, via the new Victoria Line, which to my uneducated eye didn’t seem anything remarkable, except perhaps that it was a little cleaner!, to the Crowls, where my illustrious uncle was planning his usual exhausting day’s outing for me!  It was supposed to be the Vic. and Albert Museum, but we went to Madame Tussaud’s instead.  (Had to go round Regent’s Park to park the car.  Fabulous fabulous houses and mansions round there.  All Georgian with pillars

Part II

and statuettes on the outside of buildings, etc.  Lovely stuff. In one part they’ve pulled down all but the front of a whole section of these houses, and all that’s standing looks like a whole lot of sightless eyes with the sky – grey – behind. Madame Tussaud’s is most curious. None of the models are quite life-size – always just a bit smaller it seems, and some of them have heads that are much too big. Some in fact are so bad they’re not even recognisable ([Samuel] Johnson for one, and heh, heh, heh, Holyoake for another). However the majority are good, and some are remarkable.Though the show biz section is consistently bad, and out of date. The Chamber of Horrors was in a state of repair, and only a few murderers were still sitting in their coffins. Most of the older exhibits are excellent, though they include rather odd subject matter. And there is a section that represents the two lowest floors of the ship the Victory with Nelson dying in one bit, and the usual sound of men dying all around and guns booming and the ship creaking and the smell of gunpowder, and generally it just made me feel sick. All the facts and figures of how Nelson won his great victory. And a footnote: 300 (?was it?) of the men in the battle went deaf as a result of it. Great...

We went onto the Planetarium after lunch and tho it was only for ½ an hour it was fantastic. You go into a great round room holding possibly 5 or 600 people and seat yourself and look, while you’re waiting, at cut-out silhouettes of London landmarks set up round the entire room with lights behind them. In the centre is a machine that is in fact a massive projector controlled from one side of the room by a panel with a man commentating. The roof is dome-shaped and when the show starts we grow [go?] through a quick version of the sky coming into night as the stars gradually appear. And then the whole thing moves right across the dome, at the will of the operator. Also on the dome are flashed pictures, sometimes moving, of close-ups, so to speak of other galaxies that appear like masses in our sky; the Milky Way for instance. This was much more interesting than the two hours at Madame T had been. And above all it made me feel terribly insignificant. If you move one inch forward in your chari as you read this, you will be one inch closer to England. That is comparable to what our voyage to the moon is in size to the entire galaxy we inhabit. And that’s only one of millions of galaxies. Doesn’t say much for our importance, does it.

Back to the Crowls for tea, and Winnie Crowl came too. Remember her? She’s Reg’s cousin. A dear old lady who really makes an effort, like Reg, to talk to you as an equal, not as a youngster – tho she’s getting onto 65 or 70. She doesn’t always succeed, anymore than Reg does, but they do try not to alienate themselves from someone who is so much younger. With a little persuasion I played some Beethoven sonatas – bits of them for them, explaining as I went along what was happening. Reg recorded most of it! Good grief! Things must sound pretty terrible on that piano actually, because it’s out of tune, and sticks, and notes won’t repeat, and oh, dear.

On that morning, Nina had said just before we went out that she would wash my scarf for me if I didn’t think that was being rude suggesting it! I accepted gratefully of course, and she gave me one for the day, and then gave it to me full stop! She’s a real dear, and I don’t think Mavis could do without her. She looks after Margaret much more it seems to me than her parents (!) and Marg is really attracted to her. So am I – she’s lovely, and has a marvellous sense of fun. I rather think perhaps that Reg has been living in a house with 3 women too long, and this is why I’m so acceptable! I often wonder if Mavis really cares to have me there every other week, although she too is extremely kind, and I’m no doubt doing her an injustice, because of her very quiet way. They also washed a shirt that I’d left there by mistake over Christmas – I’d had a funny feeling I was a shirt down! – and also told me which soap powders were best for whites. We chat about all sorts of domestic things there! (!!!!!: Penalty!)

Patricia Hayes

Anyway, on Sunday after lunch Reg took me over to Ann and Pat’s – five minutes away – as I had to play for these two at some Charity do. It turned out to be for the Assumption Sisters’ friends: the people from the families they’ve helped over the years. It’s an annual affair: one week (last) for the men, and the one we went to for the women. And they provide supper in a huge room, at tables, not buffet either. It was one of those thrown together concerts, and the worst part about the girls’ items, was that they didn’t know them. I hate that, I’m afraid, and find it very embarrassing. But the biggest surprise of all for me was that several actors came along to do some poetry readings and in the group was John le Mesurier – you do know, from George and the Dragon: the Colonel!  And he’s also, as they said, been in practically every British comedy ever made. He was a delight. Whether or not he was acting all the time I don’t know, but he was just like he always is. Must be his public image. He read a couple of poems, and said he’d never done this sort of thing before, and wasn’t quite sure if he’d do it right, and made every word he said before he even started like the lines from a comedy. Marvellous. The others were all good too, and though some of their faces seemed familiar, their names meant nothing. (One of the women at the do was Patricia Hayes, an actress. Ring any bells. Made films, a few, round the 40s and 50s. [The daughter was Teresa Jennings; she’s mentioned in the obituary. She was small, like her mother. Her husband was considerably taller.] Another student has a brother in a pop-group which I’d heard of back home.) The concert went on rather long however, with too many bad items, including ours, and not enough good. There was a lady ventriloquist (looking very like BerthaRawlinson!*) who was very good: her [handwritten] dummy took over completely – and had an argument with a lady in the audience! In fact it really does seem that these people get a bit schizophrenic as the dummy did all the talking nearly.  

Centre, a student, I mean, but married to another one of the students, is the daughter of

LOTS of love, Mike

*Bertha Rawlinson - see entry in Te Ara Biography.

Newest member of the clan

 Heard from Daphne Hannagan this afternoon that she now has a great-grandchild.  

The baby's name is Elise Mackenzie Simeon.  Her parent's names are Melanie and Luke and normally they live on Stewart Island (presumably when they're not giving birth to babies...)

7.1.69 First letter of 1969

7.1.69

Hullo, is this the first letter I’ve written you in the New Year?  Happy New Year anyway.  There seemed to be a bit of delay in mail here and I’ve only just (a day or two ago) received a letter you wrote on Boxing Day.  I think I’ve had everything you’ve sent from Fr Deslandes; not quite sure but I think I’ve two.  And they arrived without extra charges or anything.  [Father Deslandes, as I recall, ran the orphanages for South Korean orphans.  My mother and I each sponsored one of these boys for some years.]

 

Both Margaret and Mavis’s birthdays are in December!  Mavis’s was on one Saturday that I was up there and I think you’ll find a reference to it not so long ago in a letter, but I can’t remember the actual date, and Margaret’s is just a short while before Christmas – but again I’m not sure of the date – perhaps I can find out – plenty of time anyway!  Do you think I should have at least sent a card or someut?  It’s a bit late now of course.

 

Got me $10 without any great fuss , except that the gits at this end had sent the copy where I could then collect the money to a Post Office way around up the main street, instead of sending it to the Main Post Office, which is two minutes walk from the house!  It’s a little branch in the back of a Chemist’s shop.  There are almost as many Post Offices here as pubs – four branches within close walking distance!  And guess what else turned up – I was riding along in the bus just last week from the Opera Centre, a way I’ve come dozens of times and the bus passed a little notice on the wall saying: Change Alley!  It was where it should have been, but is too small to be in the A to Z.  I was on my way into the Strand but decided to come back later and have a proper look.  I did (and incidentally discovered that I’d never walked along Fleet St before in the process) about 10.30 at night and went in and had a look at it – at considerable risk to my life and limbs if any mugger had seen me no doubt!  In Change Alley there are now the back entrances to the St Martin’s Bank  and Lloyds Bank and one or two subsidiary buildings’ rear ends, but no Frobshm and Whoojy.   Sorry, they just don’t appear to exist anymore. 

 

Got some Tablets today – with all the guff inside them.  Thank you.  Also the 2 bob bit! 

 

Well since I last wrote what’s happened?  On Tuesday, New Year’s Eve, I went up to Ann and Trish’s for a meal, and to go to a party with them. They had been carol singing with some Anglican group, and the people at the party were from this – but not a very friendly mob.  I talked to the same guy nearly all night, and one or two others.  The majority of them left us alone – the 2 girls, Anne’s sister Marie and self – until after we came back from Trafalgar Square, when most had gone home and there were less to contend with.  I’m supposed to be going to a meal at a pub called the Swiss Cottage on Sunday with 12 of them – some of those I got to know vaguely, but I’d sooner not go – it sounds a rather too expensive, and unnecessary evening.  The four of us went to T. Square to bring in the New Year, but apart from the spectacle of hundreds of balloons floating away up at midnight, and some nits prancing about in the fountains – we watched from a little distance on the St Martin’s in the Fields Church steps – it wasn’t very exciting.  And we were only there for a short while.  None of the girls wanted to go in the crowds, and though I might have if I’d been with Mike or Kevin or someone, they made me feel rather panicky with their constant insistences that we all hang onto each other ALL the time.  By the time we got home from the party it was about three – I was to sleep on a couple of chairs in a sleeping bag at the girls’ place – and I was feeling rather unpleasant generally – I helped those girls wash up the dishes twice that night, at the party, while the hostess stood around looking on!  And we missed a lift home to the girls’ house as a result.  (Aaaagh – what a mess this is.) I didn’t mind doing them the first time  - but twice was too much!  And then I slept badly, I had a bit of Kingsley’s sore throat, and I’m always too hot in a sleeping bag.  What a night!  And then I had to go to the copyist’s all day straight from the girls’ without a shave – I was too lazy to carry my shaving gear as well my pyjamas, but since I’d gone to the copyist’s on the Monday with a day’s growth then too, they probably think I live in a state of permanent bristle. I hadn’t been due to go anywhere on the Monday and had got caught out.  Anyway, Pat cooked me a fantastic breakfast – beans, an egg, sausages, toast – and since I was still feeling rubbishy I couldn’t even finish it!  She’ll make someone a marvellous wife – not me, though – I don’t think I could stand someone quite as scatty as those two can sometimes be around me for life!  [Apparently unaware that people do grow up.] Actually they’re not so scatty as of yore – just indecisive – eg, if I hadn’t sort of organized them about getting off and going to T. Sq, we’d never have got there. For all their close and long friendship, they don’t think alike enough for me.  [What?]

 

To go on, I went to the copyist’s - did I tell you his name – George Bamford, in his late 40s I should think, glasses, little mo, and though apparently disorganized, a very thorough copyist – though even he with Zerox [sic] machines and all finds keeping up a task.  How did they do it in the old days?  His wife does all the photo-copying for him – he does all the necessary writing.  And though they appear to be a middle-class sort of couple they talk when their boy is there – he’s 19, 20, like East-enders.  In fact, George talks a good deal of the time  - and copies away while he does so!  But it was most fascinating to hear the talk around me of recording sessions, the Rolf Harris show (which they do all the copying for) concerts, etc.  I spent all day from about 11.15 till 6.00 cutting single lines of music from photo-copies, pasting them on (with double-sided Sellotape) another sheet (and editing them so that the players could turn over conveniently), in order that these sheets could then be cleaned up with a white paste substance (so that the edges of the cuts don’t show ) so that they could then be photographed again, blown up to a bigger size – the print was tiny – and thus turned into completely new parts.  Most of the work as awkward as this – this stuff was just too

 

Part II

finickety to copy out.  They gave me a luncheon voucher for three bob for lunch and I just went out – determined that I wasn’t going to starve because I’d been feeling so rotten – and had a 5/6 lunch – four courses!  And not too badly either.  The Bamfords are a very nice couple – they seemed to be giving Christmas presents – belated, to nearly all the kids in the block of flats they live and work in! Certainly there were enough kids there at various times.  And he’s very patient – though I think I was working well enough (since I did the whole job of four complete parts in the one day) and I think that some work (more of it) will definitely come my way.  He’s been asking me to ring and find out about checking some more parts, but so far he hasn’t had time to do them.  He even said tonight, since it was the third time he’d had to put me off about the work, that it would definitely be given to me, when he was ready, so! this will be a little extra cash in hand. 

 

However withal this filling in my time – and Hansel and Gretel and Les Girls (film) on Thursday, the first with Kevin and the other with Mike, the week that I’d planned to spend in practice slipped through my fingers somewhat.  However I did get some work done.  Hansel and Gretel was rather a delight, with two adults in the parts looking like kids!  The witch was a bit disappointing – played by Aussie tenor Ronald Dowd, but he looked unhappy as a dame – and consequently the last act was nowhere near as good as the other two.  Les Girls is a Gene Kelly, Kay Kendal, Mitzi Gaynor, Leslie Phillips, Patrick MacNee (Avengers) musical, which Mike has been insisting  for years was very very good – and it was.  The music, for Cole Porter, wasn’t up to scratch, but it was well performed, and the whole was very enjoyable. 

 

On Friday I came home after playing the piano most of the day and spent the time copying out my songs for Kurt.  Did this all day Saturday too, and didn’t even go out as I thought I might have done at one stage.  (While I think about it, cooked myself a pie tonight with: two half-cooked sausages I started for breakfast but which I’d originally intended having on last Sunday and forgot – forgot yesterday too -  a half cauli, also intended for Sunday’s meal, two enormous potatoes, mashed, a left-over tomato, an onion, and a small tin of vege soup, without the water added.  And cooked for about a quarter of an hour: it was delish! Crowl the chef is back!  Actually I got the general idea from a recipe I’d used one other time, with considerable adaptation.)

 

On Sunday, just for interest’s sake, and I suppose to keep Kevin company, I went to Worthing with him, by train.  He was going back to pay his ex-employer a fiver he had had to borrow when he arrived back in England, and so we went via Brighton.  Saw quite a bit on the way down – passed Gatwick Airport where only a night before a plane had plowed into a house a mile from the airport, and where also there’d been a train crash – didn’t see either of the wrecks, of course, but when it got to Brighton it was already dark – five o’clock – and drizzling and windy.  But we walked around a bit for ¾ of an hour, and had a quick glance at the place.  When we went on to Worthing, a nice enough wee town – also a coastal place – and spent an hour talking to mine host, his wife, and dog. 

 

Monday, we were back to work with a vengeance – a free morning, but straight into rehearsals for the coming master-classes.  I’m out of working condition, I can see – we were spoilt over the pre-Christmas time because we had no language classes and no coaching sessions.  Still it’s very nice to see everyone again, and though this morning’s reps’ class was rather terrifying, and the forthcoming Opera for All auditions at the end of the month don’t help either, but once again it was all very good.  The class this morning was taken by John Gardner – that’s all I know about him – on Massenet’s Manon.  It was terrifying, because I was first to play and had to play the overture!! Fortunately it was playable, but he was very finickety about right harmonies – wrong notes don’t matter as long as the harmonies are right, he says; fair enough, but I hadn’t even looked at the overture!  Still, that wasn’t the worst: when my turn came round again , he wanted me to play one bar and of course do you think I could get the blasted thing right for him, on the spot?  Makes me shake to think about it all.  But he said something that interested me: that he was rather of the opinion that we shouldn’t prepare these works beforehand for the rep classes – we were expected to be able to sight-read this sort of thing as a normal course of duty, and he said that you were inclined to lose your nerve if you got flustered after you had prepared it or if your sight-reading was constantly letting you down.  I think I have lost my nerve (!) because there was a time, in the dim distant days, when you could lay anything down in front of me and I’d have a go at it.  But now it worries me.  And yet, in my own coaching sessions, I cope quite adequately with what is given me.  I think it’s the fact of having an unknown quantity in the presence of a particular rep, and the presence of the stage managers.  Oh, dear.  Well I suppose if I can survive this morning’s battering and still look the others in the face things can’t be all that bad.

 

That’s pretty brought things up to date – went to Mike’s for tea last night thence to see The Canterbury Tales, a musical, of sorts, which I enjoyed in large spots, but not entirely.  Kate and Mervyn Jarvis also ran [came? Mervyn was a good friend of Mike’s and I’d also had a bit to do with him back home.] The latter’s over here on a business holiday till the end of the month. 

 

Oh, well, pray for me!  That I’ll get through this next month, and term without too many bruises and that I’ll get some of the old confidence back.  I think perhaps that’s what lacking, you know.

[handwritten] Anyway, lots of love to you both – Mike XXXX

21.12.68 Double Bill and holidays

Dear Mum, (21^st Dec)  It seems to be ages since I wrote to you last, and I’m sorry about that.  At least for once I have an honest excuse: this week has been the week of our three productions and we’ve been really flat out.  To show you how little I’ve been home, two weeks ago I went and bought some tins of snacks to have for tea at night during the week that was to follow.  I’ve still got them!  Last weekend I did have a break from Opera, and went up to the Crowls again.  On Saturday afternoon we went to a Christmas Party, for about half an hour, that was being held for the Mentally Handicapped Group.  I didn’t actually have to go, but Uncle Reg (I think I’d sooner call them that, in spite of theirs and mine agreement to the contrary [wonderful piece of grammar here, the result of not being able to go back and correct] had said he had told them that if his nephew wanted to come for a short while he would go, but he also said that he felt he should put in an appearance.  So what could I say?  Anyway, as it turned out while we were there, there was a young bloke about my age doing a Magician’s act, and he hit it off remarkably well with these folk, just knowing how far to go with teasing them by telling them a red thing was blue, etc.  He was very funny really.  I hadn’t been particularly keen on going , as I really felt only like sitting completely still and doing nothing, but it was quite an enjoyable half hour. 

 

That night I just sat glued in front of the TV and watched an old Glenn Ford cowboy film that was worth watching in spite of its title: Cowboy and the Redhead!  And then a rather clever Sci-fi film.  On Sunday, we went in the afternoon to a Carol Service being held at Highbury (still in London) where Reg works, a few days a week.  [Reg did accounts there.  Part of the complex was Stephenson Hall, where a few years later I went to train in Residential Child Care and met my future wife.]  I had already said I’d go to this so was prepared and it was a pleasant half hour of carols, old and new, and then ‘High Tea’ after.  Honestly I drink so much liquid at a typical Crowl weekend, it’s a wonder I don’t drown from the inside.  Also arranged to go and stay there over the three days at Christmas. Kingsley is going on Christmas Day to have dinner with someone who’s a friend of a friend, which saves my feeling that he’s being left on his own. 

 

THANK YOU AND FRED AND FATHER CHRISTMAS for the endless succession of postal notes!  AND the chocolate chippies.  AND the fudge AND the cake – Kingsley doesn’t eat cake at all so I’m sharing it with myself!  It’s rather funny about these postal orders with stamps; the blokes in the Post Offices invariably look askance at them, but now I’ve been in so often, that I can tell them what page it is in their reference book which saves that much time.  Sometimes I get a shilling for two 5c, and sometimes 11d.  I don’t really think they know what they’re supposed to do with them.  [Obviously I knew nothing about the complexities of exchange rates.]  This morning one of the clerks even refused to believe me when I said where he could find the information, and even when he looked it up he reckoned that he’d never given out money on stamps before.  It was only the arrival of another man who’d paid out on another lot previously that saved the day!  Incidentally about that $10, apparently an office in Chichester or somewhere informs me by post when it’s ready for me to receive.  I got that off the obstructive guy today, but the bloke who helped out in the end had told me previously that I should come back in a few days and see if it had arrived.  Government departments: !!!! [It’s hard to credit this kind of bureaucracy now, when you can transfer money so readily.]

 

I hope you realised that the money I sent you was FOR YOU and not to pay any bills and things of mine!  I thought it was better than trying to send a not very satisfactory Christmas present.  Last weekend I didn’t take anything to the Crowls, mainly because the little lady who sells flowers on the street wasn’t there that Saturday, and of course it turned out to be Mavis’ birthday!  I’ll take something bigger up to them on Tuesday. 

 

On Monday last we had our first rehearsal in Sadler’s Wells.  In the morning a piano rehearsal which went quite well, and then an orchestral rehearsal in the afternoon, which was especially interesting to be able to hear the sounds I’ve been attempting to make for the last couple of months.  I think it is very well orchestrated, as clever in its parody of 1920s sounds (early jazz bands, palm court orchestras, etc) as the whole thing is clever in its general parody of opera altogether.  (Seem to be some mighty confused sentences here today!)  But the orchestra players themselves are a rather scungy lot, considering they’re being paid, which I don’t think I am.  (I am being paid for selling programmes at the two performances of Albert Herring though, which I hadn’t expected!)  They are from the Royal College, and while the bulk of them aren’t a bad crew (and altogether they’re a very good orchestra) there are several who have made James Robertson’s life hell, and also the rehearsals.  One of the last rehearsals was so bad in fact that the poor singers scarcely knew where they were. It is very, very poor I think.  [I wonder if the musicians were actually sharper than Robertson...?]  Of course, as with everything I get everybody’s side: from Mr Robertson to the players to the singers!  Anyway, I am very much enjoying myself playing the piano part: though last night I seemed to be getting mental blocks or somut, [attempting to spell a Cockney version of ‘or something’ perhaps] as on two occasions I sat happily there when I should have played a note or two, and on another occasion I got a full 10 bars behind, briefly thank goodness, and played a completely contrary chord!  Fortunately in this sort of music, the audience would never know!  But I felt pretty silly anyway.  I don’t think Robertson noticed – he didn’t say anything  - but I think some of the players did!  Urgh!  [This doesn’t appear to be the time I had problems with an orchestral piano part during a rehearsal and had to be assisted by a friendly wind player at the back of the group.  I’ve never felt wonderfully confident in an orchestra.]

 

Sheila Thomas, the outside rep in charge of Dido and Angelique, and who is the nicer of the two ladies in this capacity, brought me a cup of coffee for the work I’d done on Angelique!  She is nice!  Unfortunately she isn’t working on the same stuff as me next time, for the coming master classes, but I’m working again with Alistair, who as I think I’ve said before, I get on very well with.  On Monday, after Albert Herring (which was very good, perhaps a little over-produced if anything, and which got good reviews though not enthusiastically wild ones) I went round to Hazel’s (in the same suburb it is) and several others joined us for a party.  I didn’t stay very long, however [handwritten] to be continued. 

 

Part II

as we had another lot of rehearsals the next day at Sadler’s Wells, by the way, the old theatre, that is, is the most maze-y place I’ve ever been in.  [This was the fifth theatre on the site, and has now been replaced by a sixth. The Sadler’s Wells Opera Company had moved out earlier in the year to The Coliseum.]  It took me about three days even to begin to find my way around it, and I can still get lost quite easily.  And I’m still finding places I didn’t know existed.  It’s large backstage – probably almost as big as the actual auditorium – which isn’t huge, but three-tiered – and there are rooms for everybody, stage staff, music staff, conductors, ballet rooms, rehearsal rooms, showers (quite a luxury in a NZ theatre) and all the usual accoutrements.  (Of course I would have to spell that wrong!) [I’d left out a ‘c’. I seem to remember that it was on the first day of rehearsals at the theatre that James Robertson bawled out Alan Opie for being late (he’d slept in) in front of everyone – singers, orchestra, stage crew – and told him he’d never make it as a professional with that attitude. Opie seems to have done all right in spite of this!]

 

Incidentally the SUN is shining here today – the first time in about three months.  Perhaps the rain has cleared up the cloud.  In Islington the other day, where the theatre is, it’s quite hilly, and the water was just pouring down the streets.  It hasn’t been that cold here lately, except for one very bad week, but it’s always damp.  Not to worry – the mould hasn’t appeared on me yet!

 

Thursday night was the Double Bill’s opening night, and it went off very well I think.  The papers, however, while they didn’t slate the actual productions, weren’t in the least bit enthusiastic about the way Dido was done, nor about the choice of Angelique at all.  These people get too serious about art I think, and fail to realise that something with a bit of humour in it has its own place.  Dido is a very interesting production, I think.  The leading singers are all dressed in very ornate costumes of considerable beauty – except Aeneas, who is in an awkward armour type thing that makes him look as though he has his shoulders around his chin all the time – and instead of the chorus being on stage they are in the pit with the orchestra.  Their place is taken by the ballet who dance in very symmetrical and angular patterns to the singing chorus.  And to their own dance music, thoughtfully provided by Purcell.  They are dressed in green tights, boys and girls (they’re all so young – 15 or 16 I think) and when the story is going on, recline in designs similar to those that you see in 19^th century paintings – where classical people (very overdressed) were surrounded by dressed cherubs lying in attitudes all over the place.  I like this production, but only a few others do.  The scenery is very simple – Dido’s Court being a set of steps covered on the audience side by what looks like half a jelly (patterned, of course) and at the back a raked platform: ie higher (by a lot in this case) at the back than the rest, with a single rectangle reaching from its left centre to the flies.  The witches appear through trap doors and have great swirling cloaks over tights, and curious make-up that in the half light looks like their faces are hollowed out almost.  Horrid.

 

Next Day.  The scene in the forest consists of nothing but bogus and very large leaves flown from the flies plus more green in the lighting and a sort of dappled green effect thrown all over the stage.  The principals, except Aeneas, all come on in green cloaks too.  (I’m typing this in a short space left before I go out – also listening to the last few moments of Götterdämmerung, er, rather the last 20 minutes or so – it is fabulous.)  In the sailors’ scene there is a projected light onto the backcloth simulating water in the distance.  Angelique is done in sort of pop-art colours, though done relatively realistically as far as the scene itself is concerned, and all the characters are dressed in over-stated versions of their 1920-30 counterparts.

 

Well as I write this we’re now finished with the Double Bill and strictly speaking are on holiday.  There is talk of the Double Bill being taken to Southampton, but what the story is I don’t know.  As usual the reps are the last to know.   After the show last night we all went over to the Shakespeare’s Head, a pub opposite the stage door, and talked.  Everyone was a bit put out that there wasn’t a party arranged, except for some special people, somewhere, [probably those who actually put the money up to fund the shows] and so a group of us decided to have a party of our own somewhere and finished up going to Sara Wilson’s flat.  She is one of the stage managers, and her flat-mates are away home for Christmas.  She lives at the Marble Arch end of Wimpole St (though it’s not called that in typical English fashion), five flights up.  Most of us stayed onto (ye gods!) 4.30, and then I went home with Mike, who had come with me, and stayed at his place for the rest of the night.  It was a nice quiet affair, with a fair mixture of Opera Centre bods; funnily enough, with a few exceptions, not one of the usual cliques, but made up of people from different groups.  Had it struck home to me yesterday that I’m not the only one in the position of being far away from home at Christmas, and it’s obviously struck some of the others a bit too. There are quite a lot of Colonials at the Centre; in fact at this party last night, if we include Mike, there were only 4 out of about a dozen or more people that were born here.  Mad. 

 

Tonight I’ve been invited out to dinner by Diana Reid, another stage manager, with David Gorringe.  I’m a replacement at the last moment for a boy that Diana’s been trailing around with all term, and who has now been dropped or has dropped her.  Either way it sounds a bit of an awkward position, but unfortunately I didn’t find out about it all until after I’d gladly accepted the invitation!  I’ve been so busy the last fortnight that I’ve completely run out of sox and am now trying to dry a pair to wear tonight!  Thank goodness it’s the holidays.  I find that I’m looking forward to them more than I’d expected.  Not that I dislike the course, but the rest will be most welcome.  Actually I’ll only really take this coming Christmas week off, as the Opera for All auditions are coming up in January, and I’ll have to do some hard work to catch up for them. 

 

I got a card from Monica Stokes [my mother’s sister], well all the Stokes actually, and 3 postal notes!  Isn’t she a trick?  Will you give her my love and tell her thanks very much indeed.  Barbara Green sent me a card too with a cute little angel saying her prayers on it [handwritten] and tried to tell me it was her!  Lots and lots of love - it’ll possibly be New Year before you get this, Mike. 

 

[written on the back of the aerogram] P.S.  The trunk finally arrived – Wednesday last – day before I needed my dinner suit!!  It had been in the U.K. for nearly 3 weeks.  We now have so much junk here there’s hardly room to move. I think Kingsley has shifted everything he possesses over here!  AAAGH!