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My darling,
This is 7.30 on Saturday evening and I am feeling a bit loose in the mental joints and as if it were Sunday as well. Perhaps it is a sign of mental loosening that I throw back to depressing feelings that it is Sunday at the old prep school at Bishops Stortford: how penetrating these memories are! I did not write to you on Thursday or Friday because I had not the time to do more than write to the children on Thursday, and yesterday evening I went to a party at Dr Mom's house – he is the President of the Society – to meet the training committee. I thought the evening was passing quite well, that is that I might get to bed by midnight, when they announced amidst great enthusiasm a cabaret show in my honour. It turned out to be five men,
all brothers, and a girl, unrelated. I did curse it that we had not, or I had not, agreed to a five week tour of Latin America for the whole family, but no doubt it is better as it is. I must say I am a bit surprised to find I do not know a damn thing about Latin American, or indeed American, geography. I had not realized that the next stop is Patagonia. Anyway, the members were all introduced to the celebrated Dr Bion. They were all people who had been to university – a qualified doctor, a dentist, a biologist and so on – but they had never practised but had gone straight into show business after fulfilling their promise to their father to qualify first. I cursed bitterly to think you were all in Los Angeles when you might have been with me.
I was shown the instruments which were to be used: a primitive drum, pre-Colombian flutes, a sort of banjo the back of which was the skin of an iguana, and a pretty conventional guitar. They were dressed, except the girl who was in blue, in very handsome gaucho costume, jet black, buttoned up jacket, black ‘wellington’ boots and a very striking deep red scarf–shawl affair. The dancing and singing were, to my eye and ear, pretty usual folk lore though with great verve and in a pervading