Angus Mackay Diaries Volume XIII (1994 - 1996)
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Angus Mackay Diaries Volume XIII (1994 - 1996) ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 128 July 30 1994 – September 21 1994 Saturday, July 30, 1994 (cont.) Reading Shaw’s music criticisms, I was struck by him beginning an article, aged 19, in 1876, on celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Beethoven’s death. It had never occurred to me before that of course, S. could have known well people who’d known & worked with B. After all, think who I could have known & worked with in 1944. However, I didn’t, & nor I suppose, did Shaw. Sweated over to Finsbury Park to feed Flash. Sitting-room with three young people lying on the floor. I said, ‘I thought I’d better let you know I’m in the house. I’m not a burglar, I’ve come to feed Robin’s fish.’ At least they sort of smiled, unlike the previous lot. It’s a long journey for a pinch of fish food. Hottest & heaviest yet, with thunder forecast, but it didn’t materialise. I don’t know what happened to the thunderstorms of my youth, & I mean my youth not my childhood. It used to get heavier & heavier & tenser & tenser & darker & darker. Then a few rumbles of thunder, & the first huge drops, swallowed up by the hot pavements. A downpour, more thunder & lightning, & then it was over, the heaviness gone, but still warm. We have had thunderstorms forecast three or four times, & nothing. Still, my day was made by Justin bounding in & saying he was going away for the weekend. It was heavenly to take everything off for the whole evening. Not dressing after my bath was lovely. Walking downstairs creates a little cool air around one, which you feel if you’re naked. Have I said that I had an invitation from Julian. ‘Please will you come to a small party here to celebrate the 40th birthday of Salad Days with some of the original cast on Sunday, 7th August, 8 p.m. onwards. It would be wonderful to see you. All this typed, presumably to everyone. On the back, written ‘do come, if you can face it – shall quite understand if you can’t.’ Of course I wouldn’t have gone anyway, but it’s interesting, I think I sense that he doesn’t want me to come. Which doesn’t surprise me a bit. He converts my complete boredom with a SD, with his own unspeakable emotional vulgarity, into an inability to face it because of the painful memories of D. it rouses! Goodness, if only he knew what D. thought of it – and him. Shall I ever forget the last night, she in that purple velvet coat, standing at the back of the stalls? I think she lasted about two lines of the opening chorus & retired to the bar. She took a curtain call. J. made a speech. She smiled & smiled, if she had stopped smiling, she would have fallen over. Imagine the horror of that party! Horrid food & not enough drink, cast encouraged to quaver thro’ the whole score, taped to be played over & over later – but not to me. A gruesome thought. It’s a wonder the card doesn’t have ‘Zimmer’s at 10:30’ on the bottom. Sunday, July 31, 1994 Just as bad. What did the Victorian’s do in their clothes? Fed Flash for the last time. The rather dim young man was ironing sitting on the floor. It seemed rude to linger long enough to stare at what he was ironing on. Fish dead in my pool. Because of the loo overflow that R arranged the level of the pool is where it should be, up to the stones, but within reach of a cat for the first time. There was a large clear place in the weed or disease? Goodness knows, I didn’t mind much. On H’smith tube station * picked up* a copy of George Mikes ‘How to be An Alien’, it has apparently sold three hundred thousand copies since the 1950’s. I opened it hoping for a real foreign view of Britain. What I got was lumbering facetiousness that would not disturb any sort of Englishmen for a minute. No wonder it sold so many copies, it butters us up, – aren’t we quaint? And more interesting than any foreigner. Oh dear, it might have come out in Punch. *I mean I picked it up off the floor. Monday, August 1, 1994 Still boiling. I thought old people felt chilly. I see, even now, an old lady in a wheelchair, with a woolen hat, a woolen coat, a woolen rug over her knees in a temperature of 82°, & that is inside, in a ‘shopping precinct’. I seem to be sweating more, though less in my feet, as a youth. Oh, dear, ‘young’ people. Waited all day for Neil or K to ring. Neither did. Fearlessly went to new film Paris France. I should have guessed its quality by the fact that it was at the MGM Picadilly. Silly, embarrassing, fearfully written bit of soft porn. All the worse because its ‘creators’ felt it to be art. Left after 20 minutes. Tuesday, August 2, 1994 The heat, I mean. Awful. K. rang to say Thursday better, nothing from Neil. Oh I do hate such a lack of consideration. O, this weather! I have to keep my left hand off the opposite page to be sure I won’t wipe off the ink with sweat. Rang Tim in a.m. to say that I have had a good bit of cheddar from Sharron & rasps or straws from the market, so he need only do the main course, & I could do the wine & the gin & the whiskey & the coffee….. So that’s how it was. Not that ‘dear sweet good Tim’ as I described him in a note after the evening, is in the least mean – he has no money either, & I did tell him about John N’s wine. And he brought a good lasagna & some broccoli and some garlic bread. Well, he doesn’t guess I don’t like it. What’s wrong with bread as a central blandness, without which we can’t do? The whole evening was a success. He is so much better, & was looking really well. I am so relieved, because he is someone we can ill do without in the theatre just now, not just because of his talent – considerable – but because of his mild gentle humorous temperament & his abundant common sense & integrity. He still doesn’t watch ITV in case he says Mairéad’s commercial. I lent him my two volumes St. John Hankin & ditto H.H. Davies. How pleasant it is to have taken this friendship from that play in funny little Croydon. Dinner in garden, by the way, & half way through he was being rained on. I didn’t notice till he said. He is a dear man. I hope he finds a good wife eventually, nobody deserves one more. Wednesday, August 3, 1994 Still boiling. Going to be 70° all night. On tenterhooks all morning till I got Neil & K, in case I’d have to organise lunch at Elfort Rd. Rang Neil at ten & got him. There is no ans. machine at The Bowdens despite all those wires for him to work at home, eventually I said firmly that it must be Thur. tho’ he preferred Wed. Well, K’s working & he’s not. Rang K. & got no machine & no answer. Rang again at 11.0 & got the machine. Prefer that to a snub. So it’s tomorrow. Miserably hot, but started IT at last. I’ve got to send it to John D. this last time because of K’s loan & Edna’s legacy. How destructive heat is to thought. Here, at any rate, for me. Lovely long talk to Sharron. Thursday, August 4, 1994 Rang at 10:30 to see what they had or hadn’t got. No answer, only machine. He rang back after I got back from the shops, a bit thick, just up obviously. I said ‘I’ll do it, it’s all right’, assembled the parts of a salad niçoise, & a lump of boiled bacon to make a separate salad for him, as he doesn’t like anchovies or tuna or olives. Got there at twelve-fifteen, with two bottles of Ardèche £2.25 from Safeway. He was hoovering the sitting room in a hangover trance, his face a bit puffy & swollen, as he always gets when he’s had a bit of a night, & had just got up. He has one of those soft faces that show this more. And, just like D. his brain doesn’t get going quickly. Two thirds of the way through lunch, in his case about an hour & a half later, goodness he makes me laugh. Dear Neil. The lunch was a success – the food, I mean – I think. In other ways, not so much. Too many calls between Neil & his agent, for my taste. And N. embarked on an exposition of the trial of O. J. Simpson, who, it seems, is a violently famous TV star of a violently unpleasant TV series in America, who is accused of murdering his wife & another man. It sounded all that one wouldn’t want of America’s frightful blurring of fact & fantasy. None of us were interested, but poor N. went through it like an audition. Very boring. Still, K. found the boiled bacon salad eatable, & Sharron & N. had a second helping of the niçoise. K. said, in his trance, about three times, that it was ridiculous that the Ardèche was £2.25.