27.1.70
Dear Mum, Mike Tither has just received the news this
morning that he is now an Irish
citizen ˗ which means, as far as I know, that he ceases to be a New Zealand
citizen, in the meantime, anyway. This have been the only way he could legally
stay on in Britain, that he was able to discover, that didn’t involve some kind
of fraud. He received a ‘paper’ in the post that morning written in Gaelic (!) and had to ring the Irish
Embassy (or whatever it is) to find out if it said ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Remember that Unity service I went to? I meant to mention
also that the minister who gave the sermon had the most curious speech
coloration I’ve ever heard. By some defect his final ‘s’es were left behind the
word so that they followed at a second or two’s delay: alway...s, curiou...s,
servi...ce!!
I went up to the Crowls’ on Sunday for dinner (couldn’t stay the weekend as Margaret has bought
a new bed and the old one is cluttering up my usual small room, and Nina hasn’t
yet moved. She will on Wednesday.) And then I went onto Doris Berry’s place.
Have I spoken much about her before? She’s the lady who did the Carmen rehearsals with me back home [in Dunedin], and who has now returned to
her home in London. She had invited four of us up for tea: three Christchurch
people and self. These were Neal and Jan something (he’s about twenty-eight/nine, I suppose,
she’s perhaps somewhat younger) and Margaret Williams, a teacher of about twenty-four/five, I
guess (or perhaps younger). The married couple are working here just now and
intend just touring and seeing things all over the world for the next few years
apparently. Margaret (like most New Zealanders) speaks at a tremendous rate
with no stops for breath: her sentences will often either die for lack of
breath or lack of anywhere to go. This is a funny thing lots of us do; we
forget to take a breath when we ought in the natural break of this sentence,
and wonder why we’re going blue in the face before we’re through. Doris has the
same tendency in a different form ˗ she knows where she’s going and is in such
a hurry to get there that not only her tongue talks, everything else about her
head does too, and it’s like a little kettle about to boil over. She’s very
sweet and kind and nice to know, and though we all had to endure some slides of
Margaret’s European Tour (we were much more appreciative of Doris’ NZ ones ˗
what parochialists!) the evening was very pleasant generally. But it had been a
day of conversation ˗ Reg and I had got ourselves tied up in knots about
theology (!) before dinner and having to make
conversation with unknown people is a very tiring task. I generally just
ask pertinent questions, and let them go on! [Reg and Mavis had been enthusiastic Methodists when younger, but had
ceased having anything to do with the church when I met them. However, some time
after I left England in 1974 ˗ by which time Mavis had died ˗ Reg went back to a
local Methodist church which had had something of a revival, and became just as
enthusiastic again. He eventually met his second wife-to-be there.]
I was going to continue this, but I’ll start another one
later. Love, Mike.
