by Diana Athill
The financial disaster I mentioned in my last (if you got same – Outlook Express came up with a sinister message and I’m not at all sure that I interpreted it properly) – is distinctly odd. When I got my last bank statement I nearly had a heart attack: there was only ninety pounds left in my account and I had written a cheque for a hundred and something since the account was made up. I knew I’d become a bit light-hearted about money since book money had been coming in – but surely not so light-hearted as that? And surely even I would remember if I had written a cheque for £3100 on July 22, as the account says I did. So I called the bank (it took a good 25 minutes to get through to the appropriate part of it) and the bank said ‘But you did write that cheque.’ ‘Who to?’ I screamed, and she said she didn’t know (being miles away from where the account is kept) and would instruct them to send me a photo of the cheque. Which would take about a week. And which has not yet come. I phoned again today and had the exact same conversation. If it doesn’t come in the next few days I shall have to go to my branch and throw hysterics until something is done. Meanwhile Barry, bless his heart, is keeping us. Pray God it’s a silly mistake of the bank’s and not some evil crook at work. On the stub of the cheque I’m supposed to have written it is recorded that I wrote a cheque for thirty pounds to our London gardener, and I don’t think he would be up to the really quite difficult task of altering in both words and numerals ‘thirty’ to ‘three thousand one hundred’.
There was, by the way, a long piece about Outlook Express in the Independent the other day saying it was teetering on the brink of collapse. Any other bad news? Can’t think of any at the moment but am sure I could find some if I really looked. Another ‘by the way’ – the reason why there was enough money in my account to cover a cheque of three thousand plus was that when my last Granta cheque came in I reckoned that it would make such a minuscule interest in a savings account and would probably vanish in the form of shares, so I might just as well keep it there until it was spent on groceries and so on – at least it would be safe! XXXX D
16 SEPTEMBER 2003
Darling Edward –
Three lovely e-mails from you when I got back from Norfolk today (Sept. 15). I’ve just printed out that invaluable instructive one, for which thanks thanks thanks!!
The cheque saga – it’s been a bit exhausting, the bank being fatuous beyond belief, its right hand never knowing for a moment what its left hand is doing and a long session at Hampstead police station where I had to go to report the matter was very hard on the sciatica (if that’s what it is – it’s still rampant although I’m sort of getting used to it and with the help of constant painkillers I’m a bit less immobilized than I was). The cop there was v. thick – had to move his lips when reading – and v. bored, and it took him nearly an hour to produce what turned out to be an extremely simple form for me to sign. But the next day I had a phone call from the Fraud Squad which cheered me up a lot. He said they really hadn’t a hope in hell of catching the villain, because it looks like a job of a kind which they are getting all the time now, organized by a gang which corrupts people working in the post office sorting offices to procure them a harvest of likely-looking mail, and such cheques as they then get out of it are then ‘processed’, and are cashed in China (or Hong Kong, which is the same thing), over which the UK has no jurisdiction. They think most of the firms which get things paid-for with these cheques have no idea that they are forged, so tracing them is no help. But – and here comes the good news – he said that as soon as Barclays had let them actually examine the cheque (the forms I had to fill in were authorizations for this), and (I guess) they have conclusively cleared my gardener, as they expect will happen and so do I, which will not take long, I’ll get my money refunded. I always thought I probably would, but fully expected to have to fight with the bank for it, but he seemed to think there would be no question about it, and I don’t think he would have called to tell me that if it were not so. Which is, of course, a huge relief – though I shan’t rejoice a hundred per cent until I’ve actually got the money! The moral of the story is only too obviously don’t send cheques through the mail, which is a bore when one has to pay people like my gardener who don’t deal with cards – it will mean always being here when his two lads turn up and thrusting cash into their sticky hands, which I don’t think he’s in favour of because I guess he gets his labour where he can find it – they change quite often. If only you were here when the money comes home, we’d open a bottle of champagne!
What I’m hoping is that the next e-mail I get from you you will tell me what Chris Carduff has to say about the Collection [of Edward’s poems], and that it is Yes! Love & Love. D
18 SEPTEMBER 2003
Darling Edward –
In spite of being still hideously sciatic and beginning to fear that I always will be, I’m feeling pretty good today. With the utmost dubiousness I sent to Ian Jack at Granta a piece based on something I wrote forty years ago based on the experience of very nearly dying when I miscarried a baby which I badly wanted to have, and discovering as I came round from the operation which saved me that it was so marvellous still to be alive that it mattered much more than losing the child! I put it into the third person and trimmed it a bit, but I still feared it was too personal to be presentable . . . and this morning a postcard came from Ian saying it was very good – as good as anything I’ve ever done, so he will be using it in the mag. I want to send a copy of it to you, and know I have to click the paperclip ikon, but I don’t know how to tell the pc what it is to attach to the e-mail. The piece is there inside my computer somewhere. How do I bring it together with the paperclip? I know it’s as easy as pie to do, but not what it is.
Oh dear what dimness. However I have just, with infinite laboriousness, managed to send an order for groceries to Waitrose to be delivered on Saturday morning . . . a great step forward in computer sophistication. This tiresome machine went into its freeze mode quite madly two days ago. Among other things it froze every time I tried to get it to clean itself. So in despair I called a lovely computer tutor known to my neighbour across the street. He’s been working in computers for years, and finally had the bright idea of specializing in sorting out the problems of elderly writers who had at last decided to get a computer – and he put just one tiny ad in the Spectator (arguing that its readers were mostly over fifty and literate) – and has never looked back. He says he could work day and night if he wanted to. Anyway, he put my box through a brief medical examination and diagnosed the trouble as hardware beginning to wear out, which would cost over a hundred pounds to mend – whereupon he recommended living with the problem after he had persuaded it to do the clean-out, which he promptly did, which would make it a good deal better for a while anyway. And when it gets too bad to bear, which may not happen soon considering how little I use it, then if I decide to get a new one he’ll give me an estimate for procuring and setting up the cheapest one we can find. Today, chastened by his attentions, it has been behaving very well. Thank goodness. There certainly won’t be any new computer, however stroppy this one gets, till Barclays has refunded my money. Love and love D
8 OCTOBER 2003
Darling Edward,
Here I am yet again reverting to Olde Worlde ways. The reason is one I hardly dare to confess, because I know you will disapprove and I fear you are right. The IBM, even after a most thorough house-cleaning, just went on getting naughtier and naughtier, so that every operation was interrupted by a freeze-up about every 20 minutes, and the amount of time the freeze-ups lasted was steadily increasing. It really was becoming too tedious to bear. So when I got my money back I decided I must be a devil and get a new one.
So yesterday Francis Hughes brought me a Toshiba (because it was the least expensive new one he considered acceptable), and transferred everything from the IBM onto it, and introduced me to it. It’s a neat little silver job, much quicker than my dear but naughty IBM (the printer leaps into action at its command!), which works on a
battery if you want it to and which has a little glass plate built in instead of a mouse – you direct the pointer by moving a finger tip about on the plate, which I think I’m going to prefer to the mouse. But I’m not yet used to its touch, and this evening, when I began to use it for the first time, got into silly muddles and was too tired to persist until I got over them. The introductory lesson F. Hughes provided as part of the service still has an hour to run, so I’m to save up problems until next week, when he’ll come to sort them out for me. There won’t be many, I can tell. I really have learnt all the basics with you and the IBM, I found, so I’m now quite confident that I’ll soon feel at home with this one. The chief problem is learning not to touch the glass plate by accident as one types, because it responds to very light touches you hardly know you’ve made. It astonishes me to realize how much I learnt from you – between you, you and the IBM took me onto a level of confidence I couldn’t imagine before we started. I find myself looking at the Toshiba in a completely different way from how I looked at the IBM to start with: that appeared as a Total Mystery demanding a sort of blind faith that only you could have inspired; this one is just another word processor! Hurrah!!
Why I’m so tired tonight is that this morning I suddenly realized (shock horror – but thank heavens!) that I was supposed to be in Norwich Magistrates’ Court, to which I have been Summoned, because one of those fiendish police cameras caught me driving at 51 mph through a village with a speed limit of 30 mph. What with the cheque drama and the beastly sciatica, and Nan’s holiday, I’d utterly forgotten receiving this summons – it was pure chance that I turned it up this morning while looking for something else. It’s Terribly Fierce about how one must appear, so I called the Court in fear and trembling . . . whereupon a dear, kind little girl told me that all I need do was write apologizing, and explaining and pleading guilty, enclosing the necessary documents. So that’s all right and I shan’t end in jail – but one of the Necessary Documents was a vastly complicated form to fill in about my finances – they explain that without it they might fine me more than I can afford, so it’s important to be accurate. My dear – it was worse than an Income Tax declaration! I went nearly mad digging about for the information they asked for – why oh why do I always throw away receipts and so on? It aged me about 10 years. Finally I let my writing go more and more quavery, and my sentences sound dafter and dafter, in the hope that they’ll think, Poor Old Thing – and now I’m worrying that they may start questioning my ability to drive!
Your poet friend bravely returning to his shack in the woods before the snows set in gave me a very complicated dream last night in which I was staying with a rather cross sandy-bearded man in such a shack. The snow was so deep that I couldn’t go out to pee – there was, of course, no loo – so I had to use a soup bowl and tip it out of the window.
A lot of people say that they really hate revising something they’ve written, but I’ve always enjoyed it, so can well understand the fun you’re having with the memoirs. I don’t have a pic of me and Alfred, alas. Wish I did. I look forward so much to reading the mems.
Love. Diana
9 DECEMBER 2004
Darling –
I wrote you such a long and rambling one, I can’t possibly recap it. What I must do is write you a whole new one, but now it’s too late to do that, so I’ll do it tomorrow. I wonder how come you didn’t get it . . . my fault I’m sure, as you always so encouragingly point out!!! For now – just love Diana
10 DECEMBER 2004
Darling Edward – 2nd attempt at this recap. 1st interrupted by a phone call and when I came back to it the thing had turned itself off, and when turned on again I couldn’t find my beginning! So: what it said was good that you were glad to be home, worrying about Neil – but Barbara’s thing on her temple which definitely was a cancer, and which caused concern when it didn’t heal after removal, now at last HAS healed, so no doubt his will too. After that the lost message – the first lost message, not the start of this one – was all about Barbara’s Conservatory, a saga which has finally reached a happy ending, which we were celebrating when we were in Norfolk last weekend.
Our dear Lesbian neighbour in the country had a most splendiferous conservatory added to her house by one of the world’s most expensive conservatory firms, and eventually persuaded B that she should do the same. B has always been more annoyed than I am by the fact that our tiny little dining room in that house was more like a passage leading to the kitchen than a real room, and has longed to expand it outwards. Which could have been done quite easily and cheaply by a local builder, but B has a horror of having to take thought about practical matters, and was seduced by the argument that the conservatory people just brought the thing along and hey presto there it was. And their alarmingly smooth representative said yes indeed, that was exactly what would happen, it would be a matter of two weeks’ work at most – and that long only because of having to knock down a wall between it and our little dining room. I was present, and pointed out that the ground on which the thing was to stand fell away quite steeply: foundations would have to be built. Well, yes, he said: perhaps because of that it would be safer to say three weeks rather than two.
So Barbara signed on the dotted line. That was in April – and it was not until last weekend that the job was finished! Most of the time no one was doing anything. The conservatory people insisted that we should use the builder of their choice (they themselves did nothing but deliver the conservatory and put it together). They chose one who lived a two-hour drive away, and who never answered the phone, and when we screamed at them they said it was nothing to do with them, it was between us and the builder . . . who had been paid in advance through them, so we had no leverage. I will spare you a blow by blow of the rage and frustration which ensued, but it reduced Barbara to a jibbering wreck who cursed the day she ever thought of the bloody conservatory, so that it seemed more than likely that when/if it was finally completed, she would loathe it.
However . . . now that at last it is done, underfloor heating and all, it is really rather delicious, and I’m glad to say she is allowing herself to like it, to the point of rather running amok about its furnishing. Because it’s to be used as a room, rather than as a glass-house for plants, she decided she didn’t want the sort of cane furniture people usually put in conservatories and on patios, and rushed off to buy a sumptuous sofa and a rocking-chair (American, circa 1880). So I volunteered to buy the little occasional tables for people to put their drinks on, and last weekend managed to discover what is quite likely the only genuine antique shop (as opposed to junk and bric-à-brac shop of which there are thousands) in Norfolk. It is full of heavenly things and is run by a charming gay couple (the senior of whom wears a toupé – I didn’t think anyone did that any more), and I spent a very happy afternoon with them and came away with two ravishing little tables (price? Don’t ask). Luckily some shares left me by my mother just happened to Mature at that very moment, landing £5000 in my bank account. Of course it has got to be re-invested pronto, but the interest one gets these days is so minuscule that it seemed quite sensible to spend a little chunk of it on having fun. Most kinds of shopping leave me cold, but antiques and paintings! If I had the money my life would be one long orgy of shopping for those.
Since then it’s not been a good week: a visit to Nan led to the result I always dread: ringing and ringing and getting no answer. [My friend Nan Taylor, having broken a hip, had become an invalid.] Thank god her upstairs neighbour, who has a key, was in, so we got in and found her lying on the floor in the hall, having fallen on the way to answer the door. She wasn’t hurt apart from a bit of a bang on the head, but before I left she got up onto her zimmer again to go to the bathroom, and down she went again – a fit of dizziness, not a stumble. But she still gets frantic if I try to edge her towards living-in care, or going into a home. I suppose it will just have to go on until one day I or someone else find her dead.
I do hope this reaches you. The one w
hich didn’t came up as a ‘sent item’ when I asked, which is agitating. Love and love Diana
19 DECEMBER 2004
Darling Edward,
Our fingers are crossed for the biopsy. [Neil had a possibly evil lump – but it turned out harmless.] If it’s bad news I don’t think you ought to suggest no treatment. The thing on Barbara’s temple was dealt with by radiation – a very small amount of it, which caused her no inconvenience while it was going on, apart from getting to the hospital to have it done, and although it took a worryingly long time to heal it has left no unsightly scar. The thing I had removed from the bridge of my nose, which was also a cancerous ulcer, was dealt with by excision plus a mini skin-graft, and it has left a scar so slight that it is all but unnoticeable. My instinct is much in favour of having these small things dealt with promptly.
I’m so furious with myself. For the last three weeks our street has been pretty well impassable because they have been renewing the side-walks – no one could park there, and even walking to and fro was sometimes quite an obstacle-race. Two days ago I drove some heavy shopping up to as near our door as I could get, and then began to reverse out down the very narrow bit of roadway left uncluttered: one side-walk had been finished so had cars parked along it, the other side still had the workmen’s barriers up. Just as I started to back out, one of their huge trucks turned in and blocked the way. When he saw I wanted to leave he kindly reversed back to the bottom of the terrace, and I resumed my reversing, concentrating hard on watching the parked cars in my wing-mirror to make sure that I didn’t nick one of them. So hard that having briefly established than he had stopped, I failed to estimate exactly where he had stopped, so suddenly: scrunch! and a corner of the back of his truck came through my rear window! What’s more, it had made a dent in the car’s roof, which although it was very small had to be put right before a new window could be put in – which of course made it more expensive. So off I had to go to Mike, our local body-work repair shop, which exists in an interesting cave under some railway arches in Camden Town, and although he’s very nice and pops out small dents with a sort of vacuum sucker for nothing, for this he had to buy in a window as well as undent the roof, which was not poppable, so it cost me £400! On the other hand he did stay late, so as to get it done that evening, and then drove it home to me so that I didn’t have to walk to the bus and so on, and as the possibility of being deprived of my car for the whole weekend, which had threatened, was to me the worst of it (I had to get to Nan, whose bedroom ceiling had fallen down owing to a leaking pipe of her upstairs neighbour) that rather cheered me up. It’s worrying, being so dependent on the car. My mind boggles at how I’ll manage when I can no longer drive – and things like the lack of alertness which caused this damage do tend to bring that prospect to mind. Love – And thank you thank you for the wonderful lid-opener, which has just dealt splendidly with a stubborn jar of raspberry jam. Think how often your presence will zoom into my kitchen as a result of it! Diana
