eccentrics – Filed words

Dowsing 4

He even let X divine for water the other day! It seems a spring was causing the water in the drive which they thought was the soak-away.

A local boy got separated from a school in some local bush and disappeared. Parties were out combing the bush for him. We offered help but they said it was difficult country and they kept to people with knowledge of it. So I tried a dowse, with no knowledge except boy 11, but felt certain I had got a reaction, and X, bless him, in the pouring rain, and I set off in gumboots and macs and drove to the end of a track as near as we could get to the bush I wanted. I was a little taken aback when I saw how wild it was, but we set off and crossed the river as soon as it looked shallow enough. Once I’d got my gumboots full and X just didn’t try but walked in the river in his shoes, it was quicker; after scrambling about 1 1/2 hours upstream and only covering between quarter to half a mile we were soaked through, I’ve never been so wet, and X said there was about 200 more yards and then we’d have to go straight up into the bush (and we hadn’t brought any food) I fear I gave in. Just as well – 2 days later they found his body in quite a different place. We don’t know what happened but he was cremated the next day, and the announcement said ’killed in an accident’ – I suppose he fell. Very sad.

I’ve got a super $32 book on the world’s oil wells which is s’posed to be for ref. only but I begged it from the rather pleasant odd type at the Library – I know he thinks I’m a bit scatty and obviously knows what I’m at as both the dowsing books and oil books are kept in the technical and scientific section. I’ve been stymied for a while as none of my depths coincided with the depths in the book – but I think I’m on the right track again now. Did I tell you X and I are going to look at the place I think there’s a seepage on the surface – one on shore which should be easy to confirm and one near the shore which I’m told you should be able to see from shore as if the water is still you see the bubbles and oil patches on the sea. If I can get a skindiver to go and have a look-see for a reasonable amount I’ll try that but it is about 60ft down.

X was anxious to have another look for her spring at the zoo, and we did a drive around all the local roads to spy out the ground. We found one dead end road which ran up to the top of the hill, roughly where she wanted to go, and we found a gap between the houses to look down about 300 ft onto the playing field where she had dowsed. And I then suggested she should just pop up to a house about another 100 ft up some very steep steps. I had to wait a long time for her, and was just wondering whether she had passed out from the heat, when I heard her again. She had apparently been able to go through the back garden and find some traces of what was probably the same water source. So that was very satisfactory. [And from a later letter] X’s report and map of the zoo water, which went off nine days ago, and had not turned up by Monday. So she started pestering the Post Office, who nowadays have a lot of machinery (computers) to chase up any parcel that goes astray. And at last they rang yesterday to say that it had turned up and was being sent by special delivery, and they were very sorry and would refund her expense. So that was satisfactory for the idea of getting yet another copy of the map and tracing off her streams on it was a despairing thought!

Sad, sad – the latest well on which I’d staked my all, including 500 shares, was reported dry yesterday, so as I was so sure, I’ve resigned, and told the man at DSIR I’m nonplussed. I know something happens, and must try and find another map dowser to advise me what I’m doing wrong; the reactions are so definite I’m still convinced there’s something.

Trust

The man on the main road has closed down owing me money – but as he’s now been made the executive manager of something he hopes to be able to pay off all his debts bit-bit; he’s so nice, and his wife, and so believable, but I do have expenses plus plus – and he’s lost all the thousands he put into the set-up thinking it was paying for the land, transfer of deeds, etc. All the same it seems incredible that 3 or 4 adults left it all to the lawyer to arrange without checking before some 4 years were up and all the money used by the lawyer who’s gone bankrupt.

We went to see X but she seemed to have gone away, leaving the usual message visible through the hall window, on the floor: ‘Back in five minutes. Come in, Y. Z about somewhere.’ I remember her telling me months ago that they never lock any of their doors, but just keep this message where it is easily seen.

Alternative medicine

I’m going to a hypnotherapist to try and get rid of my asthma. A chap I met said it completely cured him. X tells me apparently the bloke I used to go to was one and couldn’t hypnotise me but I don’t recall his ever trying to! [Perhaps he did and succeeded!] Anyway I do hope it at least helps.

It’s most odd but he sleeps much better and longer since I’ve had my ioniser, I find it helps me much more if I keep it on all the time, instead of just night, I’ve certainly been better and clearer in the head since I’ve had it.

Have you heard of the virus that if it strikes whilst you’re taking EnteroVioform gives you some horrible disease that withers your hands and feet – nasty. X made me throw all my supplies away.

She was looking very wan, and I’m very worried about her. She’s had another very bad asthma attack, and had to rush off to get an even stronger spray thing. X packed her off to an acupuncturist at $10 a time, with no avail, except she had about 20 needles a time pushed into her, and still he smokes all over her and won’t have a window open.

She went to try and help another acquaintance with the position of her bed, because she has pulled some muscle which is not getting better, and X has a theory about not sleeping where water runs under the bed, as you know.

Care home 3

Poor old X; I am sorry that she is so unable to do things for herself, which she must hate. As for sitting round in a big room with everyone else, while the radio plays bright music, I can just imagine it, as we went to see an old lady in a home near here a year or two ago, who had to spend all her time doing just that. Ghastly, and as you say, it was a great mercy that Y did not have to suffer it, or Aunt Z either.

We had a pretty dreadful evening on Saturday when we were asked to go and play bridge with two of the more elderly bridge club members in one of the ‘rest homes’ in the village. To begin with, when we got there we were shown into a little lounge with a bridge table, two chairs, and two two-seater sofas. We managed to arrange those, but it wasn’t a good idea. I had one of the sofas and could barely see over the table. One of the OL [?=old ladies] had all my spare cushions under her, which gave her a commanding position, but a considerable instability. She was obviously going to slide at any moment to the floor. However there were two more chairs in the garden outside the window, and they were quite dry, so we solved that problem. That only left her habit of chattering the whole time. It didn’t seem to affect her play, which is very good, but it ruined my already feeble memory of what had been played. Add to that, that the other OL is well known as an awkward cuss, who can turn a remark into an insult as soon as look at it; eventually after about an hour’s play my partner said to her, ‘I wish you would stop accusing me of cheating!’ I don’t think she realised that that was what her conversation had been sounding like. I hope we shan’t be asked again – and on the whole it seems unlikely.

Gossip

Great goings on at the school. The mad cook had left and they had a man who committed some dreadful indiscretion with one of the staff so was replaced pretty smartly. Evidently there had been a minor rebellion amongst the nuns, and a lot of them left the Order.

In a letter from X – which may well have a few frills on it! – she said Y was being horrid to her husband and not enthusiastic about settling in S.A.; I don’t blame her I think I’d hate it. It’s just a matter of time before it blows up. I must get the book by Van der Post ??Flamingo Feather again – very frightening – very real.

I’m most intrigued about X and SHAEF as to us it stands for Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. Don’t tell me there’s a war on and no one’s told us out here?

Significant other 6

Also have an arborist coming this week to trim a large maple tree in my backyard which hangs over a rather troublesome neighbour to the East. This woman lives alone with 2 cats and a very belligerent noisy dog. As far as anyone knows she has never worked. Her resident man left her about 4 years ago. She occupies herself by reporting the neighbours to the City at the least opportunity – though I think that now the City people don’t bother to listen to her!!

We both went to have our hearing tested a week or so ago, and I have just ordered a thing to fit in my left ear, which is apparently worse than the other. It remains to be seen whether it is going to help, but I do find that I have to ask X to repeat herself more often than she asks me – though (privately, of course) I think that that is because she is so deaf that she keeps the radio on too loud which interferes with my hearing her the first time!!

Have you heard X has remarried? A doctor 2 years widowed – I hope he’s a better bet than her first disaster – he sounds nice, with a mind of his own, as he proposed after they’d known each other 3 weeks.

He’s about X’s age – his wife suddenly upped and ran off with a friend of theirs about 2 years ago – so he’s married a charming widow (twice widowed) of about 60 and they appear to be enthralled with each other and madly happy!

She tells me his sister- who we knew and her husband, a solid little solicitor whom I liked, but X made disparaging noises about – have separated – 4 young too – tho’ I s’pose the twins must be 16 now.

X gave us a gorgeous lunch today at the hotel. It was beautifully and lavishly presented and as [partner] said coming in, ‘I’m having a holiday. No lunch to get and I ate so much that I shan’t have to give you much for supper’!

Look after yourself – I sometimes wish you had someone to look after you – but I doubt if you’d let them!

X still lives there and still happily married to the rich old man who was a great friend of Y.

She’ll probably end up getting a brilliant degree and marrying this vicar bloke or someone similar! She says there’s nothing but friendship between her and this ‘wotsisname’ but X seems to think otherwise. We shall have to wait and see.

He said his wife went back to UK for a holiday and took $3000 with her and so liked being home and everything was so much cheaper she’d put down a payment on a house and bought a coloured TV and he was now going back too!!

I agree with you, I think he’s a honey, not a ball of fire, but then he was regular Army!! He’s always been the same, and far too nice for X in my opinion.

I was fed up with X – he’s really been smoking much less lately but he must have had 8 in the evening even when I demurred politely. It’s difficult as if I make him mad he’ll just be foul and that makes her asthma worse.

She was difficult to make progress with. You couldn’t see her face as she wore a lot of make-up; she hardly said a word the whole time, and it was very difficult to prise X away from her – he was being super-protective the whole time. They did not appear to talk even to each other very much – so it’s very difficult to form any opinion about the whole affair. It must have been very terrifying for her – rather like being thrown into a tankful of piranha fish I should think.

In company they appear to be quite close and equitable, but I’m afraid X does not get much joy out of his marriage, and the peace is only maintained by a good deal of self-control on his part just refusing to get upset by her more pathological traits.

I went up to see her that afternoon and discovered that X (her husband) had gone to sleep on her bed, a state in which he remained the whole half-hour or so that I was there. I think he must be very difficult to live with, because is he manic depressive, and liable not to take his pills into the bargain.

They have a son who married 3 years ago and went off the rails a few months later departing with an ex-girlfriend and leaving his wife in an advanced state of pregnancy. This largely I think through sheer immaturity: he was probably finding it difficult to make ends meet. Anyway he came back and his wife forgave him (one up for Rome – she’s an R.C.) and the whole family moved to a 30 acre patch to grow vegetables.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Significant other 5

I’ve fixed for one of our more eccentric friends to come to supper. She’s a sculptress and farms 5 acres on her own in a slap happy way. She had a husband but said, ‘Oh, I got rid of him’!!!

Did I tell you X’s elder daughter is divorcing her husband – with 3 young she won’t have an easy time – but she married him against all opposition.

I’m not sure if X is going to remove Y from your evil influence or disapproves of the flat or hopes to accommodate her himself??!! Maddening if he does for any reason, just when you’re settled.

X had another school dance on Friday – put on by the 6^th form. The dreary fat Y’s mama made up a party of 6 and had them to dinner first. Evidently not one of the boys asked any of the girls to dance and Y only danced with her brother who’d sneaked in without a ticket. However X was cheerful enough as she’d danced all the evening with another boy she’d ‘seen on the train’!

Have heard from X that her daughter’s husband has died – sounds a blessing to me – but she may be v. sad.

They are in the middle of a horrible divorce and he still suffers from depression. I’m sure he will recover when the pressure and rows are over.

His daughter has come unstuck from the reputedly very rich man she was engaged to last year, apparently losing the contents of her bank account in the process. He was discovered to have a record for fraud etc.

X and I have excelled ourselves again. We went into a JUNIOR bridge tournament last week and, yes you’ve guessed, we were bottom again!! He put a chauvinistic pig rhyme on my desk just afterwards:

‘There was an old man who said dash, Why am I and my wife both so rash? If she called with reserve, There’d be room for my verve, in playing the hand with panache.’

She has asked me in front of him if I’ll give him his birthday dinner as they can’t afford another party!!!

Said friend has since died, leaving her very boorish husband much lost and realising for the first time what a wonderful wife she was.

I had a hard time writing to X and put it off for as long as I could. I fear the change of relationship from having short bursts of fun living whilst he played hookey from home and reality, to her being home and reality, and he with an added guilt complex on top of it, might prove to be rather an anticlimax. She’d do better to close the book on the past 12 years and start afresh with her other pursuer. I’d have no sympathy with Y if she did!!! (I didn’t actually SAY all this when I wrote!!)

It was amusing your remarks about X’s man. When I told Y they’d got engaged, she remarked, ‘not to that drip, she must be mad’! I do hope for her sake you’re both wrong. She sounds so nice, and deserves better.

Characters 4

Her brother was there one day marching about the garden with a broom pretending to be a soldier (grown man) so it must be a family failing.

How are your awful neighbours – my awful neighbours are about as awful as usual, if not worse. Luckily for me a v. nice young couple (both lawyers) have moved into the other side of the semi next door which is occupied by one of these awful people! they don’t like her any more than I do and I sorta think they are going to something about it – being lawyers!

X sent me a cutting from one of their papers all about him and his peculiarities. There were several glaring mistakes which made me feel smug – the ancestral seat of the family for instance. We dined with him at his house, big yes, but hardly baronial. The old house was burnt down with his cousin in it which is why he inherited the title. I do pity his wife having to sit through endless journalists getting copy from him and rehearing all the old stories.

We’ve just filled out our Census forms, what a to-do – practically want to know how many times you go to the loo. I felt a bit shamed having to tick ‘no school qualifications’ and only 9 years schooling! Put my MBE after my name to cheer me up.

We left at 9.40 a.m. We popped in on the Xs at about 3.15 hoping to cadge a bite of lunch. She had gone out with the kids and he was painting the kitchen. He assured us we were welcome to sit on the lawn and eat the ice blocks we’d brought them but he was going to continue his painting and listen to his cricket. That sort of thing is very hard to stomach – especially when the stomach concerned is empty!

We went home and to X’s for supper. She had a beautiful house in a village with a square surrounded by arches. Her house is three storeys and the gravel terrace leads to the bank of another river running in a valley with trees on the other side. The furniture and paintings were gorgeous and she had done the dining room walls with gold material. One of her sons was in for dinner and we dined on homemade pate and then goose with exotically done potatoes then salad and then an enormous creme caramel. The white-coated man servant was summoned to pass round the dishes by a little silver bell and it was all very gracious living!

The evening was disastrous – my pet parishioner (who gave me the can of oil) is so alone and knows he’s odd – but I didn’t realise how odd and was rather fed up with X who finds him very offputting. He was quite batty and talked utter balderdash in the most delightful and cultured way all evening, interspersed with his wild stories of being damned to hell by Cardinal so and so and committed to the asylum by Bishop someone else – he’d lift his eyes to heaven and mutter ‘Oh the madness, the madness’ – all very unnerving. He thanked me charmingly for the evening and X said talked perfectly sensibly all the way home. He was a fighter pilot in the war. I was so sorry for all the others. It wrecked the evening for them.

Unfortunately I didn’t really take to X who was staying and I think v v was probably true – a most loud and aggressive person as my desiderata says! Anyway we got along.

Do you remember X at my hairdresser’s – by repute anyway? Well he was arrested last month dressed in women’s clothes at a club and caught giving the man he was dancing with a pep pill!! Much to my surprise he was still at the firm and as cheerful as ever when next I went. Actually I like him – he’s a pleasant boy. I gather he was fined $70.

I found two boys on the train who were crossing Paris on the metro – one who was rather a bore and who unfortunately was coming on my train but I managed to avoid as I had a couchette and the other a civil servant of some sort who was taking unpaid leave after 9 months recovery time after a nasty incident – he was staying in a hotel on business somewhere and during the night a skylight fell in and badly cut up one eye. He was hospitalised for months and had spent the months off work wandering about Europe – he was quite interesting. Unfortunately he had mistaken Montpelier for Montmartre so had at least another day’s travelling to do to get to the people he as staying with.

There was great excitement in the town yesterday morning as some bod escaped police custody and was caught locally, on the crashing into two police cars and into the fence of a friend of mine – who says life in the country is boring?! Only two weeks ago someone was caught with a bag of unstable gelignite at the pub down the road – he was dropped off there by a petrol tanker driver who had given him a lift – things could really have gone with a bang!

Sorry your new job didn’t come off – at least you’re not as inately optimistic as me – even now I am slightly surprised that anyone more suitable than me could have applied for a job!