Things fall apart 5

I’d have been v. frightened if I’d had X’s hoax phone call, but what a disaster shooting herself.

We had to go to the new house because a couple of young trees we’d ordered had turned up and needed planting. The rain got steadily heavier. We spun out the journey having lunch and saying hopefully that it was getting lighter. But eventually it could be deferred no longer so I donned my shower-proof mac and dug the holes, drove in stakes and spread roots and applied manure and filled in – apart from a few minutes when the rain changed to sleet and I cowered behind a bush – while X sat in the car morally supporting. We drove to Woolworth’s and bought a bright orange towel to dry my hair – and drape over my de-trousered legs while X drove home. But I kept them (the trousers) round my ankles just in case she had an accident and I needed them in a hurry!

orange towel for modesty

X phoned t’other night to cheer us with the news that the sewage is coming up through the front lawn at the house! It’s time it was pumped out – so we hope it’s just that and the Jehovah’s Witness hasn’t misled us – Y was full of praise for his uprightness (?!) so we hope for the best.

We had great manoeuvres yesterday getting the van out from its ‘hard standing’ as I had to take it for a warrant of fitness test. Putting it back is easier being downhill – except that at one critical moment the jockey wheel fell out having been unscrewed too far and I was left holding the front up until X could put it back!

On the whole the general impression of this Christmas has been almost completely secular, spurred on by that fat chap in red urging everyone to make it a ‘cracker Christmas’ by spending more than they can afford. A bit sad, really, and I suppose it is no surprise that the news this morning is dominated by the number of children in hospital as the result of drink-inspired ‘domestics’.

I set to and tidied up the rhubarb and this afternoon put some on to cook – come an hour later there was a suspicious smell – it must know I don’t really like it!!

The FIRST time I took it out going round the bay the gear lever came out in my hand, very NARSTY- fortunately it freewheeled round the corner and to the curb before stopping. However the firm was most efficient and have replaced the gear lever with a new one. Plus the light system for the dashboard that fell to pieces on X’s feet (glad that wasn’t my own effort too!) and now we hope for the best.

I daren’t try and hang any more paintings – I was fixing something in my glass-room and getting down I found my standing leg gave way and me and chair fell in a heap on the concrete floor – felt sure I must have broken something, but praise be only more bruises.

Apologies if my typing takes a sudden dive like that at intervals. One of the Shift controls has broken and although I have got used to using the other, the broken one can’t actually be removed and every now and then jiggles itself in play in that irritating way. As my machine is now twenty-five years old and Swedish to begin with, and long out of production I gather, there is not much to be done.

Far worse is Old Jordans which was called the Hostel was turned into a conference centre and then became a hotel and has now gone seriously bankrupt and the bank is insisting on them paying up a very large loan. It’s on the open market for sale but it has so many restrictions on its use that only a charity could buy it. Luckily George Fox lived there (?) and William Penn who is buried in the graveyard. So Pennsylvania will probably come to the rescue. It sounds like the wrath of God!

X had a couple we hadn’t met coming to tea today. I got held up gardening in the morning and had to dash out to get my glasses in the afternoon. I trod on one pair and dented the other ones when I fell over so was in a rush – and did everything wrong; the biscuits didn’t look right, the cake leaked through the moveable bottom all over the oven and I forgot to put the lemon it it – so it’s so dull I didn’t produce it today, I ran out of icing sugar icing some Russian Squares then this morning I did shortbread and dropped scones and …’no, I won’t eat anything, I’m on a diet’!!

Did I tell you that I ran into a rock which had fallen off the bank at the sharp bend which is called ‘the devil’s elbow’? The car bounced a foot into the air, and I discovered that it had a hole in the gearbox, and the gears were not connecting any more. We had so many things on this week, it seemed, that I had to hire a car to keep us going – which was expensive, and perhaps not entirely necessary, because now the hire car has gone back and Bill the local garage man has made ours work and says it should be OK over Easter. He had ordered and obtained a secondhand gearbox as required by the insurance assessor, but when it came yesterday it was the wrong shape and didn’t fit. Maddening. So he took a large hammer to ours, and apart from the fact that the gear lever nearly runs into the passenger seat before it goes into first and second, it seems to work nicely! Knowing when and how to take a hammer to it is a great art in these days of ultra-complicated motors!

Poor X. I know what a mess it can make leaving the cap off the oil, having done it once myself. But over £100 is certainly adding insult to injury.

The ancient Mini sounded a very questionable convenience from the garage, especially after I had looked up ‘HGV’ in my dictionary to appreciate the horrors of finding yourself in front of it with no power. I hate it when one hears the hiss of brakes behind one, and finds the mirror completely occupied with a Mercedes symbol or whatever, sitting a yard or two behind ones back bumper.

It worries me that you find it easy to go to sleep in the bath, having had the experience of not being able to get out and fearing the same for you with no one to shout for. Perhaps you need the equivalent of tramways ‘dead man’s handle’ which you have to hang onto on pain of a shattering bell if you loosen your grip. That ought to stop you going to sleep.

Nuisances of life 6

Poor X tripped down the step in the middle of our sitting room after breakfast and caught his face just above his eye, between eye and temple, on the corner of my grandfather’s old oak table – blood everywhere but his mother was marvellously calm – I suppose she is getting used to it as they had had I think seven lots of stitches between – picked him and shoved his head under the kitchen cold tap, and then we took him off to the doctor – but in fact it was only a plaster job and not stitched.

Right under our noses with the TV at full blast, a mouse has been running to and fro all evening. X set a trap beside him on the fireplace and the cheeky thing has managed to eat it all and not set it off. We saw the first one since we’ve been here this week, and caught him. We hoped to get t’other one before we got a clutch, or whatever you get of little mice. … The mouse has been layed?!!laid? to rest – now we’ll see if a family appears too.

X was attacked by one of our vast magpies when she went for a walk at the w/e – it dive bombed her for 100 yards actually hitting her head – ugh.

Your efforts with your frames and the varnish sounded a bit like my efforts to make a new box for the Scrabble set which I recently finished. It was a question of using up bits of wood that I had on hand, and I ended up with the box just an eighth of an inch too narrow to take the Scrabble board flat, so it has to go in on an angle with both the bits of wood that hold the pieces on the same side. Maddening. And apart from that the lid which is made to slide in and out jams when it is fully shut and is liable to fall out of its grooves altogether before it is fully withdrawn. Not a successful piece of carpentry, I fear.

X had the car out two days ago, and came back unaware of a large dent in the front wing on the driver’s side. Maddening! I don’t know whether it was a friendly shove from a larger car – maybe a four wheel drive with a high bumper which just nicely come above our wheel arch, or whether she did it herself against a post outside one of the shops she stopped at. Which doesn’t seem likely but is possible because she remembers trying to reverse and getting out of the car to check she wasn’t running over someone because the car resisted reversing.

A mob of hippies had a demonstration outside Parliament and they – some 100 strong – mobbed the official’s car when he was leaving and came into the car park as we were all coming out. Some sensible young priest (from X district so he’s v. likely had experience!) invited them in to see the cathedral. They flocked in girls on boys’ shoulders, smoking cigarettes and climbing all over the chairs in bare feet. The organist rose to the occasion and played the organ so loud they couldn’t shout the odds but in fact got talking in several groups and some joined us for tea in the hall and eventually the chaplain for the university who’s a very good type suggested they weren’t having much fun and now they’d seen it why didn’t they go – and they did!! As some 8 had already been arrested outside for abusive language, damage and knocking a policeman down, I think we got off lightly.

I’m sorry for not replying sooner, especially as you were sounding altogether rather miserable. I confess it was semi-deliberate as I thought X would think it odd if you didn’t share the letter but that to commiserate about the difficulties of cohabitation would not be news she’d really want to read! However she’s safely back here now so I feel freer to write! We went out to the airport today to make sure she caught the right plane. It was good to see her and all went well once we’d actually got her through customs – first she had to borrow $30 to pay her duty and having done that she left her two bags on the collection turntable – how she got past the customs guys without the evidence I can’t think! – I could well believe that the two of you in a single flat for 3 months would be potentially lethal. However she was most effusive about how well you’d got on and seemed really enthusiastic about the whole trip.

It’s really stupid of Mrs. X – she’s made her command performance ‘Regrets only’ put on awful printed bit of pink office paper, why she thinks any of us would ‘regret’ I can’t think!

[re puzzle] How queer it is that one can search and search for a particular feature and be sure that that piece, at least, must have got lost, and then ten minutes later when you are doing something else, you find you have filled that particular gap up without noticing. Talk about gremlins!

On the whole, the leadership was hot on the results to be achieved, and weak on how to achieve them, I thought. And that is not new.

The hospital rang me for my long awaited op. (Coincidentally a cancellation occurred only one day after our speech director phoned up to complain about how long I’d been waiting!) Alas the op was not so wonderful. The guy doesn’t seem to have sealed the fistula and when the surgeon saw me 2 days later the conversation included a priceless, ‘Oh, if it’s your speech you want to improve it’s your soft palate I should be correcting; I could do something with that’. Grrrrrrrrrrrr! So I’m back on the waiting list for round two.

We were just off to bed last night when there was a bit of a furore in the road outside. Some young lad had come off his 756 cc mini-motorbike and broken a leg. We called the ambulance and directed traffic etc. for a while. What did seem rather bizarre was that while the ambulance guys were doing their thing at one end of the victim the traffic cop was busy booking the other end for riding an unregistered bike, having no licence, being under age etc. etc. – at least I suppose it kept his mind off the pain!

Summer is upon us, meaning that there is seldom ten minutes of the day indoors when one isn’t being bombarded and threatened by the buzzing of our enormous brand of bluebottles. We have at last invested in two fly bats of plastic, which are a good deal more effective than rolled up newspapers, but still not much fun especially as they are very difficult to hit on the wing! and sometimes take a terrible long time buzzing round and round before they decide to sit down for a rest.

The bluebottles

X and co. moved out of their house on Friday and came down to us yesterday – they are to stay until I think 17th (by which time I expect we shall all be round the bend) when the house they are renting to begin with will be vacant.

But perhaps you hadn’t heard that the Xs finally got out still owing us $400. We’re pretty fed up with the solicitor who said Monday 10 days ago yes, he would get a summons out the next day – but when I called on him this Monday at a time suggested by his secretary the summons was no further forward. But yes he would do it directly he got back from a funeral and wouldn’t wait for the bailiff, but would serve it himself on Tuesday for certain. I rang him this afternoon and he was just then hoping to get it from the Court! We are beginning to despair of anyone when your solicitor can no more be trusted than your defaulting tenants!

[continuing saga]

And talking of giving up – we have a tremendous and frustrating hate on with the solicitor who seems by now almost certainly to have lost us all chance of getting any of the money the Xs owe for rent by the most unremitting negligence and inefficiency – added to which, when we ring him weekly to hear what he hasn’t done, he manages to sound patronising even when he obviously can’t remember where the ‘due processes of law’ had got and what he was supposed to be doing next.

I’m handicapped in writing this as I have a shrewd suspicion I posted the first since my return without a stamp or on a UK form – so you may get it in 6 months or not at all, or have to pay vast sums for it – but I don’t want to leave it longer to hear it’s arrived.

Too maddening, after working all day to get ahead so we’d be at the club on time, we had to rush through a delicious steak and kidney pie and go before our pudding – and were late – and then I got annoyed with a silly woman who first told me a spit and sawdust dubious joke and then tried to be funny at my expense. After this my play got worse and worse – we revived the fire when we got home and ate our puddings – mine cold bread and butter pudding – and didn’t get to bed before 12.15.

My heart sank for you about the lecture you turned up for a day late. I knew just how you felt as I did the same – we were flat broke and X came to visit and we had that ghastly Swedish girl and Y with us and I’d got tickets for one of the outdoor plays and we arrived to find it was for the night before – I could have wept.

But on the way back the car developed a definite ‘ticking’ noise which I put down to a very loose tappet – but was perhaps something more serious which I didn’t recognise as about 5 miles from home there was an almighty bang followed by horribly expensive grinding and cracking noises and a smell of hot oil! It has since appeared that a con rod broke and the loose end thrashing about went through the sump, demolished the oil pump and cracked the cylinder block beyond hope of guaranteeable repair. All of which adds up to about $600 of new bits and $200 of labour pulling them together – on top of which I shan’t ever feel confident in towing with the car again – so that we shall have more expense in changing it for something a bit more powerful – unless we give up the van which would be rather a policy of despair.

I think she’d be bored stiff here and I’d hate to lend her the Viva – she’s the most erratic driver.

It was me who convinced you there were humming birds in the hot houses at Kew as I took you there to show you and I even got one of the old gardeners and he denied it – I was v. put out and quite unconvinced – but now you have solved it for me as we lived quite near Syon Park and I must have seen them there and told you the wrong place – I get quite despondent how often I’m wrong!

I achieved my first real bit of work on the computer this week. When it finally came to printing it I pressed he button with trepidation, only to discover that the last eighty or so letters of each full line were being printed as the beginning of a new line. And of course I didn’t know how to stop it safely, so I stood there wringing my hands like the sorcerer’s apprentice while it wasted about eight sheets of paper (I’ve got it running on continuous sheets now).

When we got back from the station yesterday X discovered that somebody had picked and gone off with her only two daffodils, which were growing temptingly near the front gate. A rotten trick!

It’s a maddening thing that our TV, which is more or less audible and with a vague and rather snowy picture most evenings always seems to degenerate into a blizzard complete with a gale-like roaring on Sundays, when there is a David Attenborough series which we like to see.

I am sorry about the bird down your chimney. I can just imagine how distasteful, to say the least, dealing with the plagues has been. [Bluebottles and maggots…] It seems a pity you can’t have a holocaust up the chimney. But I suppose that might be rather tempting the fates.

Hobbies 6

I got ‘Reflex’ from the library, and enjoyed it and since then have read another of Francis’ books, called ‘Risk’ which I also enjoyed. There didn’t when I looked that time seem to be any others of his on the shelves. Anyway, I must ration myself – the library obviously regard them as second class literature since they charge for them – 30 cents a time, superannuitants 15c. I am intrigued to know by what standards they decide which shall be rental books, and which free. I suppose that John Wyndham for instance (who is free) has a serious idea underlying most of his writing, as Neville Shute (also free) often did – but then quite a good case could be made for Dick Francis as a ‘serious’ novelist portraying psychological development or something, and not merely as a writer of thrillers.

We went to see X’s play. It got an incredible write-up for a 7-man show in a really scruffy little theatre. Only 2 people mentioned by name were the nun who is on the stage all the time and X who is on 99% of the time: ‘Young X was simply splendid in his unflappable arrogance.’ He had to embark on Ave Maria without so much as a tuning fork by himself – he seems to have managed not to get cocky about it.

The wind has resolutely refused to blow enough to sail my new little Giggle. We drifted about for an hour and I failed to make any headway to clear the rocks at each side of the little bay we had launched in – but just enough to drift me backwards onto a couple of motorboats! However a man and a small girl in an aluminium dinghy offer to tow me clear – which saved me getting the sail down to row myself. Ignominious but useful!

We’re being just so lazy you wouldn’t believe it. Can you imagine us having a cup of tea in bed and playing trial hands of bridge?!

I’ve gone a trifle mad this week and bought a knitting machine – the one thing I’ve never wanted but I’ve been looking for a jersey for months – all mine I brought out have collapsed – and when I asked the woman in the meat shop where she got hers she told me she made it on a k. machine and swore by them and told me the kind she’d just got and I saw a 4 month old one advertised at nearly half price – the woman had got a big commercial one and couldn’t spare the time to work two tho’ the one I bought takes double knit and the big one won’t. It will pay for itself with about 6 jerseys. I also bought 56 lbs of clay so I can try this cold cast bronze lark – tho’ it sounds vastly complicated. I’ve got a book all about it from London. In fact they sent me two by mistake but I fear that won’t make it twice as easy. Just off to buy my first wool, feeling vaguely guilty as I’ve got a shirt for X ready to cut out and still about 30 yds of material – quite apart from the clay – I think I’ll get 1/4 ox and box of beans and go into house arrest for a year – lovely!!

We did several sketches on the holiday – she working with water colour and me with the new crayons she gave me, which you subsequently paint over with water rather like a magic painting book to produce what looks like a watercolour! You can if necessary add another layer and repeat the process to change the colour (since it’s not easy without more practice to guess what a first mixture of crayons will produce). As always the difficulty seems to be to produce lifelike greens, toning down the rather violent ones in the box. Our last sketch was of an old barn up the valley. She was okay in the car but I wanted to be nearer so sat out and got much attacked by those horrid little black flies (which people call sandflies but they are more ‘forest flies’) – which produce lumpy bites the next day and have only just ceased to irritate a week later. I had to do the colouring afterwards at home from very rough notes it got so unendurable. But I was quite pleased in the end with the sketch.

By evening I get at my piles of natural wool – 45 ounces – I bought to make Aran knits for all the grands for Xmas – I’ve done a long sleeved one of immense intricacy for X’s birthday. (I must have been out of my tiny mind – about 3 patterns all going at once.)

I have stopped spinning for the time being to use up an old offcut of canvas web trying to make a small wall hanging with cubes that you see different ways (a la Escher) – but I fear it may not be going to work since the lines are not precise enough – partly because of the difficulty of making a line on a diagonal out of tufts fitted into vertical and horizontal squares; and partly because the wool is about a inch and a half long when slotted in, and wavers about.

Hmm…

I made a pair of mitts for X, out of a black lambskin which I had cured (wool inside) I reckoned she might be glad of them next winter down south – always assuming that she can get into them – I couldn’t get any patterns anywhere locally, and had a guess based on some gardening gloves. I wondered whether I ought to treat the skin with silicone car polish, or something, to make it waterproof, as I have a feeling it may get a bit gooey, like wash leather, in the rain, but eventually decided to chance it. At least the sewing, in special oiled silk, should hang together.

When I was young 3

He turned up himself, and spent a whole afternoon hand digging 3 ft deep, starting at the road frontage, and on and on to the link up with the sewage pit, commenting the while that he must have been drunk when he put it in as it was so crooked, and when he was at school his father told him he had to keep at his lessons or he’d end up digging holes all day, and now at 35, having done just that and got University Entrance, here he was, digging holes!

Wednesday 27th. Now there is actually going to be a post out today, the first since last Friday, (things are not what they were in my young days, when the postman used to struggle to our door on his bike, two or three miles from the post office with another two or three to go beyond us on his round, on Christmas morning!) so I must really get this finished at this session!

I thought I would type this morning to show off my nice new nylon ribbon. Of course, having fitted it last night, I noticed that the faint one I was replacing appeared to have been used one way only, and should really have been rewound upsidedown – so I put it back on the spare spool and put it away in my desk drawer – where I then discovered another half-length, which had never been used. So I now have about a year’s supply. I haven’t been able to get a ribbon on the right spool for this typewriter, which is made in Sweden and now 25 years old and always have to rewind the new ones onto the same old spools, which have both had replacement lugs added by me with Araldite to make the reversing apparatus work! Sometimes the ribbons I buy seem longer, and overflow my spools – hence having a half-length one put by.

It sounds a very go-ahead school. Last month they laid on a Victorian day ending with a ‘swep up’ [=grand!] tea at the house of one of parent’s parents – with all the family silver out and some of the parents dressed as maids in frilly hats and aprons. I was able to find some old pictures of my Great-grandmother with the maids in the garden of her house when she first moved into it, new. The kitchen up the back stairs was then the conservatory, and the maids lived and cooked in the back basement. Pretty horrifying really.

Your 2 people who nearly died having been in hosp. goes back to the days the babies had at hospitals died – until it was found the doctors went straight from working on dead bods to producing babies without washing.

Just had a call from the library saying they have ‘A man called Intrepid’ in for me, have you read it? I gather it has references to the set-up I was working for at Woburn Abbey. I can hardly believe I’ve been involved in so many exciting things. I really do mean to write some articles entitled ‘It’s funny I’m so boring’!

Listening to secondhand gramophone records was one of my standard ways of spending Saturday afternoon in my first two years in London – only the place to do it in those days was at Foyle’s in the Charing Cross Road. I can’t remember what they cost – of course they were all 78s and I think you could buy a new 10” for half a crown (remember what that was?!) so I suppose you could get a 10” for a shilling and a 12” for two, or thereabouts.

It is one of the memories connected with Christmas which I have, that there used to arrive a parcel of crystallized fruit every year, sent by Dad’s brother. The ones we were least fond of were the pears, and the firm favourites were the apricots. But if you got more than one of those a year you were definitely cheating!

we don’t like the pears

Stocking the larder/ self-sufficiency 3

On balance I think we have done better on the vegetable front, here, than we left, there. They must have beans coming out of their ears, as I had planted a lot and they all seemed to be doing enormously well when we left. But there really wasn’t a great variety of stuff, whereas we have come into a large fortune of carrots, onions, sweet corn, beetroot, and spinach beet. Then there is a vine with a singular and small bunch of grapes, and two or three pumpkins big enough for coaches, and a queer thing called an apple cucumber, which has the taste but not the indigestion, and the tomatoes which at present are producing about 5 pounds a day.

Beans coming out of their ears

In a mad moment I bought a 35 lb box of runner beans in the market. After a day and a half stringing them and putting them through the slicer I felt I had beans coming out of my ears and sold the last 8 lbs to my grocer – then I heard the family were coming over and I had to go and buy them back and he obviously has now put me down as a nutcase! The next day I bottled 20 lbs of plums – again forgetting to keep any for current use and had to dig out some deep freeze rasps. I was more cunning today and put an 18 lb box of apricots in the d.f. (at least 13 separate bags of stoned and sugared ones) and did remember some for dinner – v. good they were too – I still want to do 20 lbs peaches and 20 lbs nectarines but fear I’m almost too late. Oh, and soon the tomatoes will be here.

Our neighbours gave us a huge bowl of strawberries for dinner when X took over a surplus cabbage to them. Lovely exchange of goodies – our eccentric neighbour appeared at the back clutching a large grapefruit and could she have the handful of beans X offered the other day but she hadn’t finished the cabbage then, so she picked those and I gave her some of the huge pile of strawberries too. Seldom a day passes I don’t have a lemon, a posy or something sitting in my letterbox.

Another diversion was the arrival of Christmas Dinner. C.D. is a lamb which belonged to a family we knew. C.D. was their only venture so far into livestock apart from a few hens. However X couldn’t face the idea of their ewe lamb going into their deep freeze so she was presented to me – and one day I’ll have to make a return offering (which tactfully had better be a large ham rather than a side of lamb, I suppose!) So far she has cost me about $10 in wood and a hard morning’s work knocking up a cage to go in the trailer to bring her here, and $6 for a pair of shears to clean her up a bit as the poor animal couldn’t see out of its eyes and was equally untidy at the other end. The going price of a lamb is $15! – still no doubt the cage and the shears will have other uses.

[And by the end of the month…]

You have not heard that I now have a flock of sheep – having collected 6 wether lambs to join the one ewe. I drove by a third-hand appointment to a shearing shed hidden away in the hills and proceeded to wait for half an hour or more. Eventually I found an extension telephone and got on to the farm for the son of the house, who was the man I was expecting to meet. In about another quarter hour he, three men, 5 dogs, a farm bike and 2 utilities had assembled to serve me. The sheep were still half a mile away in a field. But one of the dogs was sent to fetch them, and nearly succeeded with the aid of various whistles – but he didn’t round up all of them, so one of the boys went on the bike for the rest with his dog while the rest ushered them into the yard as they arrived and soon had sorted out six wethers from the rest with the aid of a neat switching gate. They then picked them up bodily and flung or stuffed them into the 3×4 foot box I have built on my trailer. I had expected to make two trips but they got all six in with not more than 2 or 3 legs left hooked up over the backs of others, poor things.

Health

I must be a sore trial to the doctors, I think, as my symptoms always seem to disappear when they come on the scene. I had this pain in the side of my chest last week, which was very inconvenient, as it hurt to cough, and often when moving, or even lying down in some attitudes. Eventually on Wednesday evening, X insisted that I should get a doctor, which we did about nine thirty. She didn’t confess until afterwards that she was being largely influenced by a doctor drama going on on TV which revolved around a man having a heart attack!

X has had a nasty ear do – she complained of deafness – we put it down to swimming but took her to the Dr. after a few days and he said it was only wax and syringed them both and all seemed well and she heard beautifully but 2 days later got awful pain in and behind the ear so of course it was Saturday again and we had to go to yet a different partner who said there was some ‘infection and it was a mastoid process’ – whatever that means – but mastoid anything frightens me. He put her on gigantic doses of antibiotic which has improved it but she finishes them today and it still hurts. I’m not sure she shouldn’t go to a specialist willy-nilly.

I actually got around to the ‘barium meal’ x-ray he ordered months ago. ‘Where is the pain?’ said the operator and I couldn’t remember!! The ‘meal’ was revolting – the result quite negative, d.g.

Having boasted the day after we got home of our freedom from all bugs and tummy upsets I developed one the next day, which failed to respond to my usual white pills. So eventually I went to a young man who was standing in last week for our doctor who didn’t seem a bit perturbed and told me much the best thing was to let the bug ‘burn itself out’, and that the last time he went to H-K it took him 3 weeks. Mine, I am glad to say is d.v. now burnt!

People were fantastic during X’s comings and goings [to hospital]. Apart from having us to meals and looking after kids, we were given biscuits, pies, fruit enough for an army and masses of people visited X. Even an old dear of 85 insisted on having us to tea and providing us with fruit and biscuits – and then phoned me up 2 days later at 7.10 a.m. and told me to send one of the kids round to collect some warm scones for our lunch!

We had some rather shocking news of her yesterday. She was due to have an operation on Thursday and her husband rang yesterday to say that the Surgeon had started but not been able to do anything as she has a cancer which has spread and is now inoperable and he gave her a few weeks only to live.

After 3 weeks of the 2 months, X discharged herself from hospital not upsetting the Dr. or nurses by so doing as she’d been so bad tempered she’d upset everyone! I’ve had 3 v. lengthy letters since she returned and she sounds as tho’ she’s in full flight again – she really is remarkable.

I can now actually see the cards at bridge as I’ve had my old black glasses reglazed (?) with the reading prescription of my bifocals and if I sit well up to the table and ‘bosom’ my cards I can keep all in focus.

I have put on all I lost and more. The doctor’s jolly hormone pills seem to have made me swell up round the middle but he swears it’s just because I’m so much better!!

We had difficulty in getting a doctor to come (you know how they expect you to rise from the dead to go to the surgery here…)

He’s also had to have some atomic isotype something to do with the brain – which the brain man says he’s almost sure will be negative – I asked what it meant if it was positive and X said it meant he was mad!! Oh dear, oh dear.

I’m not sure if I’m glad for X or not – it must be awful for her and all the family if it’s just a matter of lying in pain and waiting poor dear.

We heard from X who seems to have completely forgotten not only that she had told us of her accident but also that we had exchanged more letters and sent her some flowers.

I think we’re both a bit tensed up. It’s too depressing the number of people who regale us with tales of how they’d planned a trip abroad when they’d retired and one of them died at the crucial moment – not good for one’s morale!

I’ve just put my hand on the stove to see if it was working – it was – HELL.

The cooker IS on!

Characters 2

V. good-looking American tall and dark in a jeans suit – he’d missed his boat as got involved in a party and got so drunk time went by! Sad really as although he said he was the cook it was a partnership set-up in which he’d expected to make $10000 over 6 months. I s’pose he broke contract but he still hoped and was phoning to try and catch them at another port – I didn’t find till late in the day that he’d in fact trained for 4 or 5 years as a chef but had difficulties as he’d got all his diplomas by 21 but his understaff kicked at being organised by him as he swore he only looked about 12! So after a while retrained as a hairdresser under Vidal Sassoon and later ran a trucking co. with another man which fell to bits with the petrol business. He was v. well read and quick in the uptake and a definite leavener to old X.

She stamps and screams and ‘after all I’ve done’ or ‘given’ and so on – she’s another who’s misguidedly KIND – I know they think I’m a cow about her but I’ve heard her telling everyone how much she does for them all and she certainly can’t afford any more grandchildren – and insists they stay and then goes round telling people how awful it’s been. I fear she’s really round the bend.

[Doing home visits collecting radio listener info] I met some real odd bods – one rather large man got out of his bath and came to the door dripping and with a minute towel which was so inadequate I said I wouldn’t hold him up but come back – I did in the evening and he was covered with embarrassment! Another elderly dame drew herself up and said ‘Jesus is my Lord and Saviour and I wouldn’t have a radio in the house’. I did wonder if her imagination of what came over the radio was perhaps more danger to her soul than what in fact was recorded. Outside was her sister who couldn’t have been less than 75-80 mowing the lawn with a nylon stocking tied over her spectacles – I almost expected to meet a third with a gag in her mouth.

Large man – small towel

I know I terrify you and can’t think why when I’m so moderate!

[But if the motion was passed]  I think he would be sadly perplexed to know what to say, since he combines tremendous conservatism with a horror of causing offence (or so it seems to me, but then we don’t really ‘take tea’).

The two girls have started ballet lessons, they look sweet in their leotards. The lady who takes them is most odd – she’s about 60, fairly overweight with straight black hair that is streaked with grey. She speaks with a guttural Dutch accent, however the kids understand her – I’m not sure that the parents do!

We had X to a meal yesterday evening – she is staying out here for a week or two trying to decide whether it is the place for her to retire to in a year or so. It’s doubtful whether she will be happy in retirement anywhere. Nothing but grievances and what she said to so-and-so to ‘put them in their place’: not exactly an endearing habit.

One of our computer buffs is trying to fix a computer that works off his wife’s voice, as she can’t type. I think it verges on being bogey, and it’s only a matter of time before the machines take over and run the world, the mess we’re making of it at present it wouldn’t be too difficult to do better. The voice coming in print is amazing.

Celebrations 5

We shared lunch with some friends yesterday. We produced turkey, stuffing, bread sauce and brandy butter and they did the vegetables and pudding and supplied the house; very pleasant it was. The day was so ‘busy’ that we didn’t finish lunch till 4 p.m. and the last present was opened amid yawns at 9 p.m.! Today, recovery is distinctly slow. We were invited to neighbours for a coffee at 10 a.m. – so we had to miss breakfast to get there in time! Since then we’ve been playing with toys and generally mooching about.

Praise be our rush of entertaining is over. Actually it went v. well. One evening this week we had two couples and it went like a dream. Everyone chatted madly – about intelligent things – and we both (and I hope they) enjoyed it. I cooked a deeelicious dinner – fillet steak (a whole fillet) in madeira sauce and mushrooms baked in flaky pastry. It cost $7 + for the fillet here – can’t think what it would have been in the UK.

We went for Saturday to celebrate X’s birthday. It must all be very exhausting for poor Y, as he has a children’s outing and tea on the day and then has the other grandparents and us on separate days because it embarrasses her for us that they give such much bigger presents than we do!!!!!!

So far we have only one Christmas party in the offing. We had the Bridge club closing do on Tuesday, and I’m glad to say that they had some much more discreet arrangements about the drinks this year, so no one got roaring tight as the President did last year. Quite a pleasant evening of chat, except that the noise level was so high that it was hard both to chat and be chatted.

We are having an Old Year’s Night party – there are 32 and only 5 men including mine host who is ‘the Director’ and is the most charmless man I’ve ever come across. He’s so nasty to his Bridge partners who are not up to his playing.   Much to our surprise mine host actually entertained us all to champagne at midnight. Of course several of them couldn’t say no and by the time we left were getting v. red in the face!

Midnight champagne

I loved your birthday card you sent me, a special thank you – could it be coincidence that all 5 cards I got had either caterpillars or butterflies on them?! One day I found a box of chocolates, a spray of orchids and a packet of T-bone steak on the doorstep (bet you’ve never had that on your doorstep!) It was from our neighbouring farmer whose sheep come in the next paddock.

We didn’t go out for X’s birthday this year (a dinner for the family absorbed more than this month’s budget for that item, for one thing!) – but I bought some pate, and pork chops, and we did very nicely (with a bit of a pause after the pate to cook the rest of it! I didn’t dare leave it in the pan). Then on Friday Y had prepared a nice birthday lunch for us, so X had a second go of presents.

She was superb, and went through the whole day with never a squeak, in spite of two yards of baptism dress (how well I remember your fury at not being able to kick in yours!) and in spite of being handed round to everybody to hold, and be photoed, and so on, with only a short snatch of sleep while we all had lunch. The baptism party which had started at 10, finally broke up about four thirty, and I was much too exhausted to finish this after we got home!

We went to X’s 21st birthday, which was a magnificent dinner for about twenty held in the preschool place next door. The first time I have worn my dinner jacket for years. (It is fifty-nine years old I see from the date in the pocket and still fits reasonably well, except that I seem to have shrunk in the legs, as the trousers hung round my ankles in swathes).

Bureaucracy 2

She offered the receipts etc. but was told he’d take her word for it – took off 2/3 of the price and charged 25% on remainder which came to $6!!! X said when I phoned it was all a toss up and depended on the man on the spot. Someone else told me it was left fairly loose so the types who were trying to pay for their holiday by calling here could be charged the whole 110% as it was becoming such a racket.

I don’t understand why you have a Trust to manage the finances of your job, but it doesn’t sound as though they are making a very good job it. How much I agree with your remark about having fewer managers and more people to actually do some work. It happens all the time with our Health service now, and all they can manage it seems is to cut down the services provided when they haven’t enough left over after paying themselves.

 

Our latest effort at service for the public is a threat by bank clerks to strike from the Friday before Christmas right through until after the New Year (and you can imagine the fun the thieves will have – there are reports of crowds of them booking flights!!).

Thieves travelling

Having spent 2 weeks since last writing being without a driving licence my news is limited. I quite enjoyed it actually and it was v. economical not being tempted with inessentials! Friends drove me down on ‘the day’ – at the end of a run round a square he said I had broken the law 3 times! All the things I’ve done for 60 years – but I didn’t push this and thanked him for putting me right – and I got my licence! – I am mellowing!

Certainly your bureaucrats sound very trying – but do not be mystified. They work on certain principles by which their actions and reactions can usually be explained e.g. ‘Never on any account admit that you have made an error – whether of fact or of judgement.’  Secondly, ‘Do not accept any other person’s actions or requests at their face value, especially when they are apparently philanthropic or economical.’ They are obviously seeking some hidden advantage for themselves or trying in some obscure way to discredit the bureaucrat. The one must of course be frustrated as wholeheartedly as the other. Thirdly ‘Never act without precedent or make an exception to a rule.’ Such initiative might be called in question and it is worth much labour even to the extent of letting one’s tea get cold or STAYING LATE to argue oneself out of the necessity. I dare say there are others but that threefold cord is not easily broken without adding other strands!

It is a pity that X’s claim to fame was to do with such shady episodes as the Profumo affair, and the subsequent choice of Lord Home as prime minister after Macmillan, which of course also proved fairly disastrous for all concerned. He was much too nice a man to make a successful P.M.

Hopefully we shall get a letter tomorrow – no, not tomorrow as it is Labour Day when like the gasmen we do no work at all; and probably not Tuesday either, because that will be like a Monday and we hardly ever get any letters on Monday – but say Wednesday! On the whole our post has got much worse since it ceased being a Government service, and quite often it seems as though they are saving up such miserable brown envelopes as they are prepared to bring us at all for two or more days of the week. The Post Office were horrified when we told them and couldn’t understand it at all. That sort of thing is definitely fifty years out of date.

He was filling in a form about her and asked ‘Have you any convictions?’ to which she replied, ‘Yes – I’m a Christian.’ Fortunately when she realised what he meant they both had a good giggle!

I am continually amazed at how like our bureaucracy is to yours – they must send representatives back and forth to learn from each other, I think. Our Ministry of Education is constantly making cuts in funds until the schools have to cut services in one way or another, and then sending commissions of enquiry to examine the school’s methods and to complain, just like your department having to cut the services to special schools and then being told off for having done so. It is difficult to imagine any more effective way of lowering morale and encouraging frustration!

Music/theatre/art 2

I went to the most extraordinary concert last night – two very solemn German gentlemen playing, so we understood, guitars. And so they did for the first half of the programme – 8 string and 6 string and a little tiny descant guitar and two people to one guitar and all sorts. Anyway, after the guitar pieces they put their guitars away and one of them got out a sort of African drum thing and the other one a range of foreign sorts of instruments starting with a bamboo piece which I think had strings which he played with a decrepit bow and produced a moaning whining sort of noise. Anyway they set to work with some rather nice rhythm and a few voice effects and this scrape-y sound which gave way to various horns and things – all very odd! After the interval it got even stranger The chap actually smiled for the first time as he told us about it and said we were allowed to laugh but it wasn’t really ridiculous at all. Well, I’m not too sure – it certainly did seem funny to watch them solemnly and with the utmost concentration saw away at a long bit of dowelling held between the teeth with a bow, drop pebbles in water, turn sirens on, throw sticks in a box, play a violin with paperclips on the strings and do various other weird and wonderful things. It was quite effective tho’, producing all sorts of eerie and sad noises – not what I’d call music though myself.

The play was G.B. Shaw – ‘Heartbreak House’, which I don’t remember ever having read. It was very well done – though as it is described as an Extravaganza in the Russian manner, or something of the sort, I felt it might have been even more amusing if I had known enough about Russian plays to realise when Shaw was poking fun at them. But it was very witty in its own right, and we enjoyed it.

I think my next endeavour might be to see if I could make penny whistles out of bamboo. I have got quite intrigued with trying to play my two (I have one in C major and one in D, and have to think very hard all the time which one it is I’m playing as of course any particular fingering produces either an A or a B depending which I’m using). The easiest change of key is to flatten the seventh note of the scale – so the C pipe will also play in one flat, and the D pipe will also play in one sharp. Now I need a pipe set in three flats, I think (whatever key that is, I never know) and then I could play most of the tunes in the hymn book! I’m not so good at the jiggy things in my special whistle book as at the hymns!

I am enjoying, for the time being, our rehearsals for the Messiah, which we have been doing with X (who is a name to conjure with in this part of the world, even if you have never heard of him!). He works us terribly hard, for a couple of hours, with only five minutes break in the middle, and I arrive home exhausted. We have only one more week or maybe two before the performance.

I’ve enrolled for a folk guitar class for next term at the High School. It’s a ‘pressure cooker’ course for ten lessons, one weekly, and I’m expected to do an hour’s practice a day, so I’d better spend the next few weeks dipping my fingers in meths to harden them so they don’t fall off!

Hardening the fingertips

X’s ex-piano teacher phoned me yesterday to tell me with amazement she had passed her exams with 112% [??] and how pleased she was. As I’ve always said, she said she has no coordination with mind and hands although ‘she is very musical’. She was particularly surprised at the examiner’s remarks on her sight reading ‘a remarkable effort’ – isn’t that ambiguously blissful!!!

Watched the BBC’s Twelfth Night which was enjoyable – though I find the comic relief a bit tedious some of the time – at least until the actual plot against Malvolio develops. Of course the main plot hangs upon a near impossibility. (Or is it absolute? Can there be identical twins of different sexes?)

X’s show (La Pericole, Offenbach) was excellent in all ways, except I thought, the leading lady. She had a voice to shatter glass which she used to the full in the tiny little theatre, and all the time she sang she frowned.

We went to see Stephanie Cole. She was due, according to the programme to be doing a monologue by Alan Bennett and then talking about her life in the second part. We had to be there at 1.15 and got there in time – only to find a man playing the Wurlitzer organ, which he proceeded to do until 1.40. X hates that machine anyway, and he admitted to being an amateur. ‘Soldiering On’ started about five to two, and finished at 2.40. It was a lovely performance. We settled back in our seats to wait for the interval to be over, when a man appeared on the stage to announce, ‘That’s all. You can go home now’! The fact that only about a dozen people had left their seats for the interval before he appeared showed that this was news to everybody. But being so surprised, and basically elderly, we did not boo as we should have done, but just left feeling done down.

We went to the opening for exhibitors of the Easter show. There were some lovely watercolours done by a guest artist, and unusually I did not see any erotic figures by X, our dentist. Y said he has some big commission on at present, which may explain it. The big sculpture which he was organising for the Red Square in the village was eventually finished, and it’s not so odd as it threatened – except that the water tends to get a bit green and turgid.

Do you find your new guitar a great improvement? It must be like my using such expensive paper to learn to paint, I feel there isn’t room to have handicaps, and I try and leave as much lovely paper bare as I can. With some of the modern tunes I feel you could leave quite long pauses between notes, vibrating with beautiful mellow tones!!!

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