121, Blenheim Crescent
London W11 2EQ
7th December, 1979
Dear Denden,
This is to wish you a very happy Christmas from all of us and to give you some family news although I expect you have heard most of it from Mollie. She went the day before yesterday to spend the night with Claudia on her birthday and then on to Devon, returning to London tomorrow when Rosemary is coming to spend one night with her. This seems to have been a very long term and the boys are getting quite tired. Andrew in particular has a very long day, leaving at 7:30am and very often not returning until 7:00pm in the evening. He stands up to it remarkably well but he is very much looking forward to boarding next year. He will be able to come home every week-end so it will be the best of both worlds. London Transport has become dreadful – very expensive and unreliable. Hugo still bicycles to work on a wonderful new bicycle that Mollie gave him, but I think Andrew and Inigo are a bit young to negotiate Hyde Park Corner. Inigo still has a lot of problems at school as far as his work goes. We had an interview with the headmaster recently who told us not only would Inigo not get into Westminster but he wouldn’t get into any school and that we must take him away and send him to a tutor – all of which seems very dumb advice to me. He is not a stupid child so I feel that it is up to the school to make something of him. Personally I feel he is a very late developer. It doesn’t help having Andrew as an older brother although Andrew only gets his results by sheer hard work. The annual local Children’s Opera takes place this week-end, only this year you can hardly call it an ‘opera’ as there is hardly any music in it. Andrew does have one of the few singing roles in which he is supposed to be a West Indian donkey boy and he is wearing a pair of ragged jeans that he grew out of at least four years ago so I think that would make it rather hard to sing and dance. Inigo has been totally miscast as a willow branch and he stands there looking rather vacant. I am a ‘group mother’ which in practice means that I am in charge of twenty-nine extremely silly and badly behaved girls of about thirteen who giggle and chew gum all the way through rehearsals. Hugo is going to play some sort of percussion instrument with the band so Piers is the only one who is not involved. Once that is over (and there are four performances as well as two dress rehearsals) I can start thinking about Christmas. Ellen and family are coming for the New Year but we shall see them next week because Tanya and Piers are both playing at the same concert. The weather is still exceptionally mild. Our basement is just about finished so it is marvellous to have that back after nearly a year. It certainly cost a lot of money though. Much love from us all, Jennifer