3December1995

London: 3rd December 1995
My dear folks,

Sunday evening! “William” is busy with his escapades on the study screen. Jones is watching another programme in the lounge. Mavis has just had his supper and is busy strewn out on the floor. He is pleased to see us. We are safely home after spending a night with two friends in Kent. The flat seems at peace with us and itself. It’s an ideal time to drop you a line. Thank you Cathy for your recent long fax and your note today.

I recovered on Friday from a couple of overnight shifts. My body complains at being wrenched around by 12 hours and leaves me feeling as though I’m wading through treacle. I have been working more than my share of night shifts of late - because the roster organiser knows I don’t mind doing them and calls on me whenever there’s a hole she can’t fill. Most people hate them. Since there’s lots of flu around, there’ve been lots of holes too. It’s good for the purse, at least.

Saturday we went around early to fetch and hang the newly-trimmed curtains for the flat down the road. The place is transformed. Jones’ efforts, combined with those of the decorator, have turned it into a decided des-res. What a change! Then I spent a couple of hours working on my annual Christmas letter, the one that goes out to all those people we would have liked to see during the year and haven’t, and also to some of those whom we have.

Finally I walked around to Oddbins bottle store to make a selection of wines to take on our trip. We had arranged to spend the night with a former colleague of Jones’ from NBC. She’s a super person in her late forties who found romance in her local village some years ago and has recently married. She sold her cottage and moved into his, an extraordinary 15th century dwelling whose timbers were framed a century before Jan van Riebeeck set out for the Cape.

They have spent a great deal of time and money restoring it and done a marvellous job. The living rooms are on the ground floor. One ascends steep steps to their bedroom, dressing room and bathroom on the 1st floor, and equally steep steps to the guest bedroom up in the roof. These are as sharply inclined as steps on a warship, so steep that I had to descend backwards. There are beams everywhere framed in the walls, just above my head in the ceiling, and emerging from walls to prop up the roof.

They treated us to a splendid supper which included some of the wine I had taken down. I needed it. In spite of their detailed instructions, we’d got lost in the mist and the darkness and had to phone for help from a local pub. It was lovely wine and I think I must have had a little more than was prudent for, in spite of drinking lots of water with it, I had to blink a bit this morning. One doesn’t learn. We went for a misty walk in soft drizzle, tramping around the local fields with Sam the spaniel.

Our host is a keen hunter and angler and has Sam highly trained as a gun dog - something he couldn’t resist demonstrating by flinging one of his and “hung” pheasants on to the lawn where Sam promptly retrieved it with in such style as to make his master beam with pride. On our walk, we cut masses of holly from hedges to make wreaths. We envied our hosts their house and environment. Both are lovely. But we didn’t envy them the commuting she does by train to London, a journey both expensive and uncertain - as it depends on the vagaries of British Rail.

We found our way back safely enough (cursing a little when it became apparent that our hosts had failed to list a vital turn in the previous night’s directions, the cause of our problems) and carried on through London’s interminable southern suburbs to a Sunday lunch with South African friends. The only problem was an increasing urgent need I was suffering to have a pee. I was finding it hard to concentrate.

Finally, with bladder bursting and my eyes popping, I stopped on the roadside and staggered to the nearest tree in a car park where I found relief. Utter bliss!

Lunch was a special occasion, marking the 25th wedding anniversary of our friends. I spent an hour with their son, Nicholas, comparing computer notes and admiring their new portable printer, half the size of the one I took to South Africa. I was most impressed with it, too, and am more than a little tempted. Nicholas has long been accustomed to do his homework on his computer. He showed me an essay he was working on. After setting out a draft, he gets the computer to spell-check it, and then to grammar-check it.

For the grammar check, he has the option of half a dozen styles, business, technical, official, casual - you name it. The result, by the time it’s printed out, bears no resemblance to the scribbles we used to hand in as schoolboys. It may not be inspired but it looks superb. The family share a couple of laptops which are absolutely stacked with programmes supplied by the office for business purposes.

How times change. There were three generations present at the lunch, the grandmother sadly devastated by Alzheimer’s and now fleeting in and out of a world of her own.

Jones was saying afterwards that if she had the choice of a healthy mind in a decrepit body or vice versa, she would prefer the former. I don’t know that I’d care to make the choice. It’s tough either way. I give thanks for present blessings and am content to remain ignorant of what lies ahead. I hope only - forgive me Cathy - that it includes a lottery win so that I can spend more time doing the things I like doing and less doing those I need to do to earn the money I need for the things I like doing! You’ll know what I mean. Just a modest win will do.

Were you as inundated with Bill and Hillary’s visit to Britain and Ireland as we were? I confess I was intrigued in spite of it all. The Clintons could never have expected in their wildest dreams that they were get the rave reception both north and south of the border that the Irish accorded them. I’m an old cynic when it comes to these things. But I really think they may well have given the peace efforts in Ireland a substantial shove - as well as boosting Clinton’s re-election programme, which is what it’s mainly about. One of the presidential aides was overheard saying he’d never seen anything like it. And if only they could generate the same enthusiasm in the States, life would be heaven.

I know it’s old hat now but I watched the Di interview a couple of weeks ago in utter fascination. What a performance! It generated a lot of sympathy for her cause. And yesterday she met the “enemy”, the palace officials she blamed for trying to destroy her, for what was described as a perfectly amicable discussion. She’s in the business of carving out a new career for herself and doing so from a position of considerable strength. Some said she made Machiavelli look like an amateur. I don’t know that’s fair. But she’s sure learned a lot since she clung to the princely arm and said that with his help she was confident of fulfilling her role. She bats those eyelids with more lethal force than a couple of tank rounds. Quite a girl!

So, too, Ann and Cathy, if for rather different reasons. Cath, we have read your faxes with the greatest interest. Thank you for keeping us up to date and for giving us a stranger’s view of the Calgarian Bensons’ home. Mum, you remain very much in our thoughts. We gather that it’s an up and down process, but with enough ups to give us all much to be grateful for. May you continue to regain your strength and health in the bosom of your family.