Angus Mackay Diaries Volume XVIII (2002 - 2004) ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 177 Friday February 1 2002 - May 10 2002. Friday February 1 2002 Saturday February 2 2002 To Chiswick this a.m. to shop for K and give him a choice. Got back at twelve, but no sign. Arrived at something after one, animated newsy talk, and an omelette with the blewits and chanterellesI got at the lovely greengrocers - £29.50 a kilo. About two four inch blews and four or five chant. about £3, not bad for such deliciousness. Now it’s Saturday night, and K’s gone, after two wonderful days.I have done nothing except stand up and sit down, and prepare four meals, and I’m exhausted. I fear K might have felt I was lazy or feeble. Well, he started out – ‘Can’t stop here talking, or the light will go’, on the buddleia, ‘which job do you want done first?’ He sawed it right down, and I do see that it’s partly destabilised some bricks. A great relief. I hope that silly fussy man won’t find something else to shout to me about. I was becoming quite reluctant to go into the garden. Horrible to cut anything down, but on balance welcomed it. Comically, the wind was the strongest I’ve heard since I’ve been here. Quite expected a letter of complaint from the next door just as we were cutting down the dangerous bush. They have a ‘patio’ (sic) garden and are clearly nervous of a jungle takeover, or indeed anything they can’t control. He cleared all the debris onto the baseball platform. Tho’ he is so careful, goodness knows what he’s trodden on, because he knows nothing of plants. Collected up rubbish on the other side, fallen off other neighbour’s side, balanced on their wall by their nosy child. What else could he do, those turfs, so yes he could dig the choisya bed to screen off the platform and did so. I only asked him to turf it, but he dug as well. Perhaps not deep enough, but still incredible. So dusk fell, and indoors. The halogen lights over the hob and the sink were replaced and he taught me how to replace them. He tidied up the wiring. He hung the rest of the pictures – about twenty. I did none of these things and didn’t watch all of them, so why am I so tired now? Well, the visit to Chiswick, and walking to the local shops for bread before he came. Then he asked me to go again, to get some cigarettes, and later on to get the replacement bulbs, two more walks to the shops. Now I don’t mean to say I wish he’d gone, wasting his time. But I am a bit depressed that I am tired and will be stiff tomorrow. Oh yes, I did clean a few pictures. I fear he must think me a poor creature and self-indulgent. But he loved his dinner, halibut steaks, and we had a good talk before and dafter. I asked about Arlete and drink. It must be me! As says he’s only noticed it that time with S and here. Today, after a bad night, I heard him about at nine. (I am foolish in that I have to stop myself thinking he’ll need waking, - hasn’t for years.) He had a poor night too and I’m not surprised, on this poor old sofa. He put a brilliant bulb in the utility room at last, so I can, see, and put up the pink glass shade in the bathroom, on a longer wire. On the ‘phone about his meeting, a bit on off, and finally on. He went out, I thought for something to do with it, but he came back with two trellises. ‘I thought you might want another.’ One for the double clematis above the jap. anemones, and in the south corner for jasminum polyanthum. He cleared up the rubbish and mugs, freebies, and other things that fell off next door’s wall, where they prop them up for some reason. He repositioned the kitchen bookcase, to give me the full use of the marble slab. Settled on my bed, with some relief to my legs, and heard his visitors arrive, quite quietly. I went to have lunch at my usual time, and was just getting it ready, when a man came in and made me jump. I’d assumed, out of corner of my eye, that it must be K, who had somehow got taller. He said mysteriously. ‘You must be the devil.’ We shook hands, and I went back to my lunch. A little while later K brought Maria R. through to meet me and go to the loo. She said very pleasantly, ‘Thank you for letting us have our meeting in your flat.’ ‘I hope Kevin has been looking after you properly.’ ‘Well, he tells me off a lot.’ ‘Ah, you don’t do that if you don’t care about someone.’ She leant over to look at my book-rest, admired it, and said, ‘So I suppose you don’t watch television.’ All on the strength of one detective story. ‘I’ve never seen so many books.’ K took her in here, and I heard her voice ‘Oh, it’s a library.’ She’s a real little cockney-fizzing with vitality. They should feature that. On Live and Kicking she might have been one of dozens. Later she went, and K brought Andy Cook, the tall man, into lunch. A pleasant witty intelligent chap, public school, I think, and suppressing it, as they do nowadays. I had coffee with them and managed one or two funny bits. K got their lunch, - Ilove seeing him treat the kitchen as his own for his friend. They may be partners in some sort of way. They’ve both decided not to go to the same agent, a sort of bond. A.C. is looking for a flat, and K gave him a rundown of getting this place. Roy rang twice to arrange a date. Darling K, so good. Sunday February 3 2001 Just sat. Stupid journalists ‘actors corpsing and then giggling.’ Really. Monday February 4 2002 Still stiff. Just sat again. Tuesday February 5 2002 Could not put off my lunch with S, Woodcock, again. And anyway I enjoyed it as usual. Brought the new life of Isadoro Duncan. What an ass she was, you can tell just from the photographs and a line here and there. But she must have had some sort of gift for a time. People who sneer at her dancing, for example, when she sometimes didn’t move from one spot, wouldn’t sneer if they’d seen V. Redgrave do just that with astonishing effect in Martin Sherman’s play. After lunch was making my way stiffly – it’s really all that getting up and sitting down – across St. Martin’s Lane, when there was a little cry and a touch on my shoulder – Joyce, John N’s Joyce. Smaller, a bit shrunk, a lot of lines, but otherwise, to me at least, exactly the same. We walked to the Piccadilly Waterstone’s, she talking affectionately, and reminding me how responsive she is to every half-shade and allusion in the talk. Gave her my number. No hideous Jeremy. I hope. Really exhausted in W’stones. Tube to H’smith taxi. Had to drag myself. Wednesday February 6 2002 Still tired obviously, the wine glasses at last. Quiet pleasant, tho’ not as good as the ones K bought, only he can’t remember where. Decided to shop at the big Tesco in S. Bush road at 6.30. Had go roundabout to get there, because in the road was a huge traffic-jam, solid from the roundabout obviously all the way back to H’smith, and the traffic-lights all turned off. Taxi from another firm, not so good and went much too fast. Can’t blame Browne’s, the rush-hour and I only ordered it at half-past five. Thursday Feb 7 200 More mail order arrivals raining in. This morning the peebottle arrived, very much à point, as I was able to pack up the old potty, thick with a yellow crust that resisted even a Brillo pad and a garden-knife. I’d Demesto’ed it, and I think it wasn’t pouring germs into the room, or smelling. The very potty on which Iras sat. But it looked disgusting. I was dreading K perhaps catching sight of it. Happily he never did, and the dustmen came this morning, so off it went. A bottle supposed to be unspillable, for my old age. In the p.m. the two cases of French wine arrived from the Telegraph wine service. Two of them at least, are non-vintage chardonnay. Also in the posta type-script from S of his introduction to a new edition of one of Michael Chekov’s books on acting. I’m afraid he’ll get criticism for saying acting no longer has the effect it once did… Card with all his plans on it, three weeks of Dickens at Albery, interrupted by five days filming at £160,000. Then Broadway 90% certain, if a show called ‘Urinetown’ transfers (yes, ‘you’re in town.’ Ugh.) Says his mother ‘is being advised on a regular basis by mother Teresa of Calcutta. Most useful.’ His letter began ‘Are Keith and Agar related?’ (He lives in Agar Grove.) I wrote back and said ‘Yes, but Agar was in fact a Stone age ancestor, and could be seen in A Million Yrs BC, saying ‘Agar hungry’ to Raquel Welsh.