Very confused and therefore not very interesting

September 9^th 1976

Dear Denden,

I have in mind to write fully about our camping trip, but as I never know what will turn up, I’ll write an ordinary letter first. For instance this morning I had nothing to do but buy food for the week-end, and already it’s 12:30, though I went out at 9:15. A policeman got me for parking on a yellow line and made me take three papers concerning the car to the police station. Because I turned up as he was writing down details I saved myself the £6 fine (evidently, as I didn’t have to pay it) so I feel I’ve saved £6 I’d written off mentally. Also had to go to the post office later as my films wouldn’t go through the letter box.

I had more than 25 minutes with Ellen on the phone. They came back to find no water or loos - after two weeks of camping that would be an even worse blow. She now has a flowing tap that empties into a bucket that has to be emptied. The place must be a shambles because as you may know they are moving their kitchen downstairs and the bathroom onto the ground floor (from the basement). She seems to think she will be able to put up Joan and the girls! She has a free day on Monday 27^th, when she wants to meet you. Tuesday and Wednesday she has to teach. My basement flat will be empty. I’m doing nothing about it until after your trip. I know Claudia wants to be in London when you are here. I don’t know whether she means to be here when you come. I wonder about the first day - if you all are as tired as I get. It might be wise to spend that day here, sleeping, going to Ellen’s after her teaching days.

I don’t know how it ought to be done, so I shall just relax about it all.

Mrs Yung was to arrive today, but I asked her to go to her cousins for tonight as I can’t take her to the country until tomorrow. Anyway, as I keep her until Tuesday 14^th when I put her or a plane to Hong Kong, it’s still five days, and all she wants to do is to see me, so I should think we’d be pretty well talked out.

I haven’t the slightest idea when I last wrote you. Trux Edwardes Jones had my flat for three weeks, but got out the two days I spent before going off to Italy. I had the kids at No 22 for three days, then a dash to Margaret Carey’s.

Yes, I remember now writing to you about going to the theatre half-an-hour late, but I can’t imagine when I did.

We got back about 6:00pm on the 8^th and I heard Jennifer trying to put off her mother, but both parents came, bringing sliced ham and some cheese. Hugo boiled spaghetti and there was some sauce left from our final night of camping and we had some luscious large Italian tomatoes, but I did think ’Upon my soul’. We had slept on the train, got off at 12:30, waiting about for the boat, and the 100-mile drive back to London which Hugo says is the worst part of the trip, and to have to entertain and feed nine people (because Lee came in to return my car) was a bit much. Hugo does almost everything. Even unloading the car would be a terrible undertaking to me. He had done it six times before, at each camp site. Jennifer was proposing to wash the pillow cases we used on the trip before going to bed that night. To use. Mad. I washed Piers and his hair before supper but they were all up when I left well after nine. One thing they were greeted with was a cat-mess right through the quilt onto the mattress. The cat belongs to the baby-sitting tenant, and this has happened once before.

Jennifer and the two boys have just come by. They have been to buy shoes, a track suit and a few other school things - at a cost of £50. I don’t know how people manage. The pound is reaching new lows today, due to the seamen’s strike. Just heard Mao has died. Mrs Chow is still here, and expects to see the end of the month. I hope you will be able to meet her. The younger son who is at Cal. Tech arrives tomorrow, but it must be for a short time as universities must start soon. Mrs Chow says she came here for cool weather and is determined to have some. It has been more uncomfortable than Bangkok because there they have so much air conditioning.

The Sullivans have also arrived. He has a year at Oxford. Have only spoken to them. I said last May that they might use this flat if they didn’t find a place at once, but I shan’t let them have it. I don’t know where I will want to be between putting Mrs Yung on the plane and your arrival. We got back to warm weather, and dead grass everywhere, and I almost thought I’d write you not to bring suits, but today is fairly uncomfortable in just my cotton shirt, and it surely can’t keep on being warm. I think there was one good rain while I was away.

We had five different camp sites if you count Rome where every single thing had to be removed from the car, carried into a flat and taken up a very small lift: we seemed to strike it lucky everywhere, for Rome was just the right temperature whereas it was supposed to be much too hot, when we were on the drives it was only too hot and sunny once, yet the days in camp were all lovely. Our final night, beside a very large lake, we had to eat inside the tent. They all complained about the rain, there never had been such a wet summer, &c, the day before had been overcast and a bit chilly, but the sun shone just as we went to eat our picnic lunch from a view looking up at Assisi, and later the town was free of the many tourists who flocked in in droves as the day brightened. What that sentence started to say was that the last thing we had looked for was a beautiful dawn over the lake, and brilliant sun to repack the tent. I slept in the car which very comfortably held a camp bed.

We had three full days in Rome, then four days in an olive grove near the sea where the children played all day in the sand and sea, two days near a pine forest on a lake in what is called the Switzerland of Italy, then farthest south on the underside of the instep of Italy, we were amongst poplars and tall cane that resembled bamboo. There also there was direct access to most gorgeous sea - we were almost the only people in sight. In fact I swam in my shirt once when I had taken the kids down and decided to go in myself. But we went twice to a more interesting place with a huge rock where we could dive. I went off from about twelve feet and struck the water with my face rather than the top of my head, and had bruised eye lids. Never done that before. This last place was 800 miles from Milan, and our return of 500 miles that day was the longest of our drives. The roads are simply fantastic. I had no idea the whole of Italy was mountainous. I understand the engineering is some of the most remarkable in the world. You sweep across enormous gorges, with the support to the road twice as tall as buildings. And the towns are clinging to the highest peaks. One wonderful Roman city called Paestum was overgrown and lost when the inhabitants took to the hills to escape mosquitoes, so maybe that’s why so many of them live so high up. They look charming, of course. Paestum has three large temples, one 600 BC - a smaller scale pantheon which even has part of its second floor structure. We were a few hours (one and a half) from Naples. We had lunch there, saw a bit of the city, having spent the morning at Pompeii, and later went up Vesuvius. It was all frightfully interesting and entertaining and fun. Hugo always seemed to find his way around the cities, park in the best places - we parked right beside the entrance to the Forum in Rome, thronged with visitors. Right outside the Colosseum, where Piers elected to stay in the car and sleep - which he also did while we went sight-seeing in Assisi.

I was also most impressed with the way Hugo can drive. He did all of it. In Perugia we were right in the hub of the old city, you never saw such parking, on the skinniest streets so steep you nearly had to run down them. Every car missed each other by inches only, yet none of the cars seemed scratched. It would be a nightmare for me.

On the drive from Rome to Santa Maria it poured I must say, as it did our first day, getting from Milan to Rome. We could scarcely see a thing, and were most despondent as Claudia had told of her neighbour returning early, tired of sitting in a caravan in the rain, and there were other similar reports. We didn’t think of it then but it would have been a too hot drive, and we saw the country on the return. Either 35 or 55 tunnels Andrew counted on that run. As it was impossible to picnic we went off the motor road to a town Hugo and Jennifer knew called Arezzo where they had once (twelve years before) had a good meal. All the streets were narrow, all steep, and all cobbled, and the rain poured down them. We had no sort of protection, though I had saved two plastic bags that held clean sheets on the train, and I had my head in one and my hand bag in the other. I finally picked up a carton that Piers held over his head. In and out of these streets, unable to find the place. But he did. Under different management; a sort of workman’s place, and we had our cheapest meal, very good, and the funnest atmosphere of anywhere. It was too wet to see famous Roman remains there, but it is a well-known place and had a tournament in the old-fashioned sense on the day we returned on the motorway, but of course we couldn’t go.

It was remarkable about Naples. First a man on our camp site said not to go as we would very likely have our car stolen. We went to two different squares with monuments in the center - so it was a respectable part - with guards and P for parking, but in both cases they were leaving for lunch and told us not to leave our car or it would be broken into. We left it in the second one after the man came and looked to see if we had anything in it, and went to a restaurant in a side street quite near at hand. Hugo decided he could bring the car outside (narrow street, they all were) and every now and then during the meal he’d look out from the balcony to see if all was all right. At the next table was a young Neapolitan with his car outside, and he got up and looked out even more often. Imagine what life must be like. There I had my first real pizza. Later, while the boys were left to guard the car, we wandered about some of the streets and two women made movements to me, to cling tight to my bag. There were children swarming everywhere, the streets so narrow, the buildings so tall, and there they were playing away in the dark, always in groups of about the same age. A little girl was yelling three stories up to her grandmother who had lowered a basket on a rope and was hauling up the groceries. Much noise and confusion. Wonderful fruit for sale. Hugo had only been to Naples once before. He seems to have a sixth sense about getting around. They both know their way well in Rome, and both have lived in Florence. I had forgotten Hugo had. We had a quick glance at the outside of the famous cathedral, and went up to where the rest of Florence was overlooking the city - a high square with a David of Michelangelo in the center. Incidentally it was shocking to see the fountains of Rome full of junk.

Our flat in Rome was the most modern I’ve seen. White tile floors, black and chrome dining table and chairs, which latter folded flat and all hung on a peg. The kitchen was just an alcove, all black, and besides the white squared off corner unit sofas there were steel and leather chairs. Filthy it was too. I had to wipe off the chairs before we could sit down. She, the English wife, has been away for two months - he, Italian, had left ash trays un-emptied and obviously Rome is dirty anyway. It was in the old quarter, sort of a Soho, and all the streets around were crowded with tables and chairs and people eating out. During the day it was quiet. An old church, which rang the quarters as well as the hours, was in a nearby square and the restauranteurs would just put a few potted shrubs and plants around an area in the square, and there would be a restaurant. We had two dinners in two different places. The market was within a block, so that was fun, and we had grand bread and cheese and peaches for lunches, and loads of tomatoes. The food wasn’t nearly as good in the far south. Very dull buffalo cheese. Great herds of buffalo we kept passing which looked out of place to me.

Our first camp site we could pick the grapes, and also a few figs, but not many of them were ripe. The facilities for washing yourself, your clothes, and your dishes, were best there, and deteriorated as we went south. All were pretty smelly, and we were revolted by the filth in the south. The dustbins had no bottoms: Hugo saw a truck arrive, several well-dressed men get out and take away the dustbins, leaving the contents on the ground: we can’t figure it out. I refused to go up to where you washed the dishes, with stinking garbage right beside, but Hugo reported the next day that it had been cleared up.

I must say it took a long time to set up the camp and take it down again. About three hours at our first stay, where beside their tent, Hugo rigged up another tent sideways, giving us a cooking area. Every time he did it differently, and enjoyed doing it. Heaps of stuff goes with us - five large saucepans - and he enjoys the cooking too, and of course the different wines from different parts.

It really was all great fun. Poor Jennifer started a boil in her armpit. Felt it first on the train going out and it was over a week before it began to hinder her greatly. In the mountain lake resort she had fever and flu. I was really worried. She never got up one day and for the next few days until the boil came to a head and broke, she was obviously in much pain. The reason for their coming by today was to see the doctor, who says it will have to have stitches in it, but not until she has more penicillin and all infection has gone. Luckily they had penicillin with them, in case Hugo, whose bites always turn septic, needed it. She wouldn’t take it at the beginning which perhaps she should have done.

Well, I’ll stop. There’s still a lot I haven’t said. We went to Frascati.

Much love. Such fun to see you all. It’s cold tonight!