Angus Mackay Diaries Volume XI (1991 - 1993)
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Angus Mackay Diaries Volume XI (1991 - 1993) ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 108 November 7 1991 – December 22 1991. Thursday November 7 1991 Got stuck with play over a simple bit of working out one speech. Bill for £300 odd for tax interest. To film as usual. The Fisher King. A pile-driver to drive in a pin. Terry Gilliam never knows when to stop. Another cursed with a visual imagination – they are never humble enough about words, - the reverse is not usually the case. Offered to take Janet out to supper, but happily for my money, she’s gone on a strict diet. Tomorrow, and horrors, to supper with Matt and the frightful Ruth. How is it that someone so intelligent as Matthew could be so obtuse as not to notice how S. and I shrink into careful distaste in her presence? American magazine editor. This has to be read word for word because we work very hard to get every word right. In Radio Times, Miriam Stoppard discusses sex in pregnancy and Russell Grant star- gazes. Friday November 8 1991 12.15 a.m. Cleaned and fiddled generally, mainly drawing-room. Geoff turned up at two-forty five and we had a pleasant chat. When I got back from the shops, he’d gone and has not yet come back. Message from a Trish saying is tomorrow night on or off? So I hoovered and tided and dusted, and bathed, all about five, so that I could sit down and write another scene from the play. It seems rather dull to me. Set out for Outer Siberia otherwise Turnpike Lane. I think I must describe it all tomorrow – it’s worth it. I am thankful to say that Robin found dear Ruth as improbabe as I do. Oh, how enormity makes one laugh! Poor little Matthew looks like a male spider moments after mating. Seriously he looks thin and pale. Disgusting meal. Thank God I brought a lot of wine. Robin was a gem. I don’t know what I’d have done without him. And his twinkling eye. Yes, tomorrow. She is hell. Poor Matthew. Nice flat, £110 p.w. Saturday November 9 1991 Well. Well. I arrived at Outer Siberia tube station at seven as planned. Robin had given me detailed instructions, which I’d left at home. Happily my intelligence took me through the tunnel and along the left hand turn marked Muswell Hill buses. Up there the usual horrid huge North London cross-roads – it’s all brutal cross-roads from Camden, North. And I waited and waited – and waited. And of course being what I am, I went up and came down and went up again all the various tunnels and exits and stairs, and even went up the one marked Bus Station in case he’d found easy parking, - but all I got was a leaflet about Anti-Fascists. I am so silly. I would go to one exit and say I’ll stay here, and after a minute or so my imagination would paint me a vivid picture of the overpowering reasons why Robin might come to the next exit that I was going to run to. I started to make plans to deal with him not arriving at all. On one of my visits to the bus station, I noted the number of a mini-cab firms, desperately needing to get to the dinner-party I didn’t remotely want to go to, and equally desperately imagining sitting waiting for the cab to take me away, half an hour after a disastrous evening had ended. Just as I was, at 7.30, thinking of taking radical ‘phone calls, behind me, of course, Robin and a v. warm hug and those really heartfelt sorry’s that are worth everything. Guess what his ‘vintage’ sports car had gone wrong. Again. After he spent £300 last week. Still, as we streaked away, he said he had got a good slow but honest mechanic, and when he did one or two other things to it, it would be worth more than he paid for it. How mysterious those dear little toy worlds are that young men live in! (For, never forget, that K. likes his toys as toys, as well as his tools of creation.) He rushed along as drivers do, but of course we didn’t overshoot, and we landed up in a quite nice street ‘Rather posh’ said Robin. And it was, superficially. I said ‘Well Ruth wouldn’t live anywhere squalid.’ Even as it was, Matthew was immensely relieved when she reservedly approved. The car stopped. R. said Now what is our strategy? What is the reason why we’re leaving at 10.30? ‘You’re getting up at 9.0, and we’ve got to go through the play before that.’ Getting it straight like that, shows the director clearly. So in we went to the tall four? storied North London house. Matthew was at the door in white shirt and dark jeans and bare feet. Now bare feet are almost invariably a bed sign. We went up to the attic floor, and on parts of the carpet were thin sheets of plastic. All well-decorated. Typical attic flat, quite spacious. Their décor runs to postcards in large groups on most walls. In the sitting-room, a sofa and arm chairs against the walls, and an over-large dining-table laid out with two vases of pinks. Robin said Can I wash my hands? and did so. I sat on one of the dining-chairs. M said ‘Gin?’ with that self-conscious smile of one who has probably not bought something else in order to pay for it. Ruth had kissed me against my will, and wiped the lipstick off playfully. Robin came back in and said Can I smoke? Ruth would love to have said No. ‘Ashtray?’ ‘I think there’s one on the balcony.’ She struggled to open it and Robin said Shall I smoke on the balcony? That was the first relish. I had one smallish gin, and only got another by asking for it – not because there wasn’t any but because no one thought of it. I talked determinedly, to be sure not to let her control the talk. She has a repellently self-conscious and smug personality, emphasised by a laugh on an indrawn breath especially when saying something about herself. She has it all, saying she was expecting to be the plumpest girl on the course, but…. The only line we were spared was ‘I have this strange sense of humour.’ Poor Matthew. He is obviously realising that he may never get a job of acting at all. He’s now writing to reps., and said Simon is doing what he can and could I … I reminded him that I had offered to do that when he left his drama-school and he’d refused saying he wanted to work in TV or theatre in London. ‘I can’t believe I said that. Can I come round and work on my audition pieces?’ I groaned inwardly but said ‘Yes.’ Then there was dinner… First course, sliced mango and raw red onion (Chris W. insisted….) then a dish that looked entirely similar, yellow and red, but turned out to be a meatless pilaff, with so many almonds and sultanas that it was sickly-sweet to the point that I could only get down a few forkfuls. Happily there was some eatable cheese and no uneatable pudding. And I’d brought some wine. At ten past ten I said we must start to think of going. So we laughed all the way home. The best part of the evening was Robin and I trying to drag poor little worried M. to a bit of reality. Sunday November 10 1991 Yves Montand is dead. Not great but the stuff of France. Woody Allen in Casino Royale, which I turned on for this one line, as James Bond’s nephew trying to get a girl into bed. ‘Let’s go into the bedroom and run amok. If you’re tired we’ll walk amok.’ Dear Robin came round. He’s 9-5ing and tired. Or rather not careless for the moment. But how good he is. Said some very useful things about our play, and then apologised for not saying more. One good thing is more than one has a right to expect. Finished J. Osborne’s Almost a. Unputdownable. Though rather bilious in places, (and the chapter about Jill B. most unpleasant) all the facts I can check are right, Monday November 11 1991 How I remember this day before the war. The misery was palpable in the air. Wrote another ten pages of the play quite good but lightweight, I fear. However, I am getting a skeleton together. Perhaps I can get some flesh on it. Re-read Margery Allingham. Still first-rate in her line. Tuesday November 12 1991 Rain, wind. Wrote another ten pages. Robin confirmed it was lightweight. But still… Wednesday November 13 1991 To lunch with K who rang just as I was leaving the house to ask me to buy it. ‘It’s quite simple, six eggs, some bacon and wine.’ So I knew it was my bacon and mushroom omelette that I taught him and it was. Arrived at the lovely clean open house, and he and Sharron were in the kitchen and lunch appeared within the usual length of time, for me, I mean! Divine easy time, no false note from Sharron – she was her lovely sunny self throughout, why isn’t she always? – no need for money talk, just love and fun and silly jokes, and at the end of it all, his music.