9November1997

9 November 1997
My dear folks,

The windowpanes are spattered with rain. Mavis sleeps noisily amid the pile of blankets that I left lying on Chris’s bed after thrusting his linen into the wash. On the TV ageing warriors are gathered around the Cenotaph in Whitehall in the showers to remember friends who failed to return from Flanders’ Fields & innumerable other battle sites. A commentator with one of those reassuring old-style BBC voices is recollecting the unimaginably huge numbers of soldiers who died horribly in useless campaigns. They are being remembered – as pledged - although those wars will soon have occurred in the first half of the last century & I doubt there will be many rememberers left. I hope something of the stupidity & waste are remembered, & the prayers from both sides to the same God for succour & victory.

More mundanely, I have been to see “Game”. It seemed to be one of the more promising features showing in Leicester Square where I met Bevan Jones whom I hadn’t seen in some months & not since he took up a new job with the trading arm of Toyota. I walked in, with an ear tuned to a Radio 4 documentary on the decline & fall of the British coal industry, down from a million miners to 20,000 in half a century & heading inexorably for extinction. Bevan had been doing overtime at his offices in Oxford Street. His new job, like his old one, entails terrific tensions & stresses in the vicious world of international steel trading with reneging & treachery the order of the day. I certainly couldn’t do it.

We order two medium cokes (which turned out to be about a litre apiece) before going into the cinema where we had the misfortune to be seated in front of a pop corn popper with cement mixer sound effects. Fortunately, the soundtrack was even louder. Game, starring Michael Douglas, is different! I’ve never seen anything like it, nor did I have any idea where it was going until the last few minutes! Very good! My enjoyment was restricted by my bursting bladder which I was compelled to relieve midway. I had to make another dash the moment the titles appeared. Next time, I shall know to ask for a small coke or no coke at all. Bevan clearly has an emergency bladder on top of his regular one because he strolled out of the cinema quite unconcerned, with his litre still on board.

We repaired to a haunt around the corner for a bite. Bevan led the way; he has acquired a comprehensive knowledge of central London in his time here. Over a light meal, I heard more of his long hours & deals & the risks accompanying them. The salad & omelette were good; I limited myself to a single glass of red wine. That cost the same as I’d pay for a bottle at the Casa de Pasto in Cruz da Assumada & tasted considerably worse. I can’t help resenting having to pay for a snack in London the equivalent cost of a four-course meal down in Portugal. Chris Jones was complaining about the £3 he’d been charged for a hamburger & imagining what he could have bought for the equivalent R24 back in South Africa. You can’t translate the costs, of course, but you do. Leicester Square was still heaving as we left, a magnet for folk seeking Saturday night action. It leaves me cold. After seeing Bevan off, I spotted a No: 6 bus making its way through the rain along Regent Street &, to my pleasure, I managed to catch up with it for a £1.20 ride almost to my front door.

Mavis joined me in the lounge for the first 20 mins of “Natural Born Killers” but his dead-weight was making my legs ache -- I kid you not -- & I took advantage of the first commercial break to heave him off & head for bed. It wasn’t my scene.

For today & tomorrow, mainly grey skies & uncertain weather are forecast. That’s okay. I’m wading through the long suffering in-baskets (all my baskets are in-baskets) & getting letters off to the many people who have made provisional reservations for the Quinta next year, asking them for a deposit to confirm the bookings. Christmas looms. I shall be working, although I’m angling for a couple of swaps that may enable me to get over to Germany for New Year. Still no definite date for Jones’s return to London but within the next fortnight I hope.

Blessings ever!
T