Brunswick Gardens
February 11^th, 1972

Dearest Machi and all,

This was not the paper I meant to buy, but it will be good for writing my leases. I was writing to Rosa in the middle of my advertisement for a tenant, which now seems long ago, but I don't believe I've written Dunbarton since. I sent your letter right onto Ned with an envelope stamped for Ellen - but I haven't spoken to her for some time either. Denden will be back by now I suppose. Time goes so fast in a way, though it seems a long time since I was tied to the phone for three whole days - but oh me, I've had a hard time since.

Except for baby-sitting for a very short while last night, and I am going over to help Jennifer get off to an early Shell dance, I have just been sitting on the chair in the bedroom, or lying on the bed.

Last Wednesday morning when my head was in a bucket of water, the girl from Farnborough phoned to say the house was flooded, that she had phoned every Patten in the book so she didn't know what my bill would be, and that consequently she hadn't had much time to mop up water. I was down there about two hours later and there were still two inches of water in the addition side: evidently it slopes that way. Isn't it awful. It's just too awful to go into but suffice to say that water was everywhere because it was a burst main - hole just big enough for my fingernail to fit into, but it sprayed against a wall and so spread in every direction and came through every ceiling and down the rafters. The sofa might as well have been thrown into a pond. The weight of the soaked carpets, and nobody to help me with them. It was like a nightmare. All the wood was soaked too, but I did keep up the fire all night, and at eleven o'clock the pump to the furnace just gave out, and most of the next morning I spent trying to get someone to fix it. I was very lucky indeed to get it done that day.

An awful trip back with roads flooded, and so dark (eight o'clock) leaving my house that I had to feel around for the car - but I had to be back because all sorts of men to read meters, clean, &c, were coming to the flat which had to be ready for the new tenant the following afternoon. It's a week ago today, and I'm still tired. Sometimes life hardly seems worth the awful struggle.

Even this morning I was on the phone more than a half hour - the furnace wouldn't come on after the power cut last night. I tried renewing the fuse - and so nervous all the time lest I wouldn't get it started before the next power cut. That time, it was only that the time switch was four hours late - naturally as the lights had been off for four hours yesterday, and the furnace started when the clock reached its appointed hour! Too dumb to think of that.

You never saw such a dirty flat! and unpleasantness on the phone which caused me two sleepless nights. It shouldn't have done, but it did. The inventory woman came yesterday with many pounds of damage for me to collect from the Rashieds.

Anyway the new tenants - young Americans - seem to be perfect. If only I weren't so tired. I had to have my dinner party which went off all right, and was quite fun, but a worry, and work. Also I went to a lunch party the same day, and one in Woking the day before. I thought I'd be a lady of leisure when I made these dates. Lee drove me to 22 on Sunday, and we moved the slung up carpets around and there wasn't much else we could do. He provided and prepared the meal for me. The floors were up in several parts and Mr Kimber tells me more have come up since. He had taken down the ceiling above the landing. I wanted to leave it - said I couldn't take any more builders, but he said it might drop when it dried out. The wall paper just fell off that upstairs hall. Isn't it all sad. I just never finish.

Saturday

It was pouring earlier as it has done since before Christmas but at the moment the sun is shining. One prays for warm weather because of the coal strike. Things sound very very serious, with British industry about to lose weeks and weeks of production. So many of the old people live with their only heat being a small coal fire, and one has heard they are burning their furniture to keep warm. I hear one 82-year-old woman had hacked up her sideboard to burn, but she must be a very hale and hearty 28. All places of amusement, restaurants and so forth are forbidden to heat. I don't know how they enforce it. I am all right to a large extent, needing only a small amount of electricity to work the furnace, and it won't stay off more than four hours at a time. Still I can't cook a thing, and gave two of my six candles to the couple downstairs.

I go to the West End this afternoon to see the movie Fiddler on the Roof - and I am so silly I wish I weren't - but when I don't go anywhere or see anyone I keep thinking I ought to. This is with the American woman named Clare Conway, who came to dinner - and whom I met last summer at a dinner with the Poteliakhoffs. Mr Conway was born in London, of German parentage, schooled in Germany and is an American. The Mr P. is English - a doctor - but Russian. Interesting people - wildly socialist, and Mr Conway is this weekend attending an anti-Vietnam war demonstration in Paris. Hence this date of mine with his wife. I am not sure we have many interests in common. I don't even specially want to see that movie.

I just came back from the movie which was very pretty in spots, but too much singing for me really. However I was very interested in all the Jewish customs, and upset how awfully the Jews seemed to be treated. It lasted from about three to six, and I came straight home, so I only talked to her for a bit before, and during intermission. Her daughter, 24, an Oxford graduate, is a radical socialist who wants to change the world. Was doing social services but found it frustrating, but couldn't get a job that she thought was worthwhile and wasn't toward a bad end - such as exploiting the masses or something. She shares a flat with a boy she is in love with, in Notting Hill Gate - awful, the mother reckons, and she has never seen it.

I felt I ought to go see the cottage, but have been talking on the phone to Hugo and they want me to stay here and have a birthday meal with them. I had forgotten it was my birthday tomorrow. Don't like the idea of getting to be sixty. Shell are reducing my pension by something absurd like 60 pence a year. I don't understand it much, but it is to do with my getting an old age pension from the government.

Lee made up my party last Wednesday, and was a great help. The first dinner party I've had without Phil, which seems rather absurd, taking three years. I am sorry that he hasn't even phoned me since to wish me a happy birthday. He says we never paid any attention to birthdays in our family, tho' that surprises me. I have just come back from having a drink with my upstairs tenants. She keeps the place looking much better than I've ever seen it. The floors are gleaming. I had three men - sixteen hours, plus Mrs Roscoe and me for the day cleaning up downstairs. My very nice spit unit was so greasy it will hardly close up and down.

I keep wondering, Claudia, if you ought to put off your return if the power cuts get worse. Better take a gamble on your health than come back to a completely unheated house. There is talk of a complete breakdown in electricity in a month. Just phoned Ruth Mary who says not to come to tea today as they have so many visitors. They are now leaving the 29th, but don't say why. She had decided not to come to 22 because of my flood. I just had a cute letter from Rosemary about a cheque, which I think went in a parcel with presents to Lucy and, gracious, I forget her name. Not like Eva not to acknowledge things but I reckon life becomes more and more hectic. Mine seems to, anyway. I miss Claudia very much but hate the thought of you and Denden having to do without her. I have given up all ideas of having to entertain as there is such a likelihood of having no way to cook. Maybe I am using it as an excuse.

Jennifer is buying a Volvo - £2,000 - so we are not doing too badly in some ways. Inigo is turning out to having great personality - being very friendly and thoughtful, offering you a seat, &c. Wouldn't it be fun if Jennifer had twin daughters. She is very big. I feel very lonesome and wish I were with you three - or four, with Joan.

Love, Marijane