Flat 3.
54 Belvidere Rd.
Liverpool. 8.
Sept. 20th. 1961.

Dear Mr. Van Thal,

You ask what I do- did ? It is did, I retired just
over a year ago, you will have gathered from my first letter that I am
sixty-six. All my life I have been on the fringe of the motor trade.
For the past thirty years I managed the Liverpool branch of a national
company who specialise in diesel injection. How I made a living at it
is a wonder to all who know me well, but I made the best percentage of
profit of anyone and the fewest bad debts.

My pension is minute, the scheme started too late to
be of much use to me, but I have been careful and want for nothing. But
for the first time since 1919 I have no car, I bought one on my retire-
ment but it was a case of either a car or buying the odd book I want, so
the car went. Now being free of parking problems, garage problems,
speeding problems is like being divorced from a drunken, extravagant
wife.

If you want to know what I look like, I am rather
Pickwickian in build, but a Mr. Pickwick with a sharp tongue.

I have not written my autobiography but have often
toyed with the idea of writing about my childhood. The theatre would
play a big part in it. My first visit to a pantomime was on Boxing Day
1900 when I was five. It was JACK AND THE BEANSTALK at the Shakespeare
Theatre Liverpool, Maggie Duggen was the principal boy. Agate says of
her " She brought on to the stage an air of guilty splendor which
included heirs apparent, racehorses and bottled stout". From that
moment the theatre held me in its spell, in its thrall I should say.

However in more recent years music has taken a very

big part.

I bought a copy of HOW TO BECOME A MUSICAL CRITIC
when it first appeared but I did intend to buy another copy to give to
the one former colleague with whom I am still in touch. We go together
to concerts about once a month, he lives at the other end of the city
to me; he is also married with a small son and is naturally tied up
with domestic affairs.

Windsor Cottage
GEORGEHAM
North Devon.

2nd September 1955

Dear Mr. van Thal,

The mail lot parked your package where it was meant to be. You sure fire quick, Mr. van Thal and your dope figures it out the way I do. So that guy Spillane has gotta himself mixed up with that big crap Jehova. The way I reckon he'll carve himself up with no help from nobody. Extremists. Fear's at the back of it, friend. See the red light once too often so he takes a high jump for the white one. Fear of some guy knowing something he ain't wise to, fear of the big boy behind the curtain. Aw! give him time to stick a blade in himself.

These guys are always after somebody in some place, first they get fresh with the iron and seeing that don't make out the way they want they slide round the corner and get themselves a fairy book that ain't the Thousand and One Nights and nowhere near it. Missionaries. Like that guy writing his dope in a local sheet I picked up called Encounter. Humphrey somebody or other, he called himself. All muscled up for culture in a big way, figures it out that what these pimps and tomatoes out East are sore about is their not getting a break on the prosperity wave. This guy is shouting his head off that he's going to stick up anybody who denies these deadheads their telesets, autos, gimmicks, nylons and a bit of skin to slide into them. I reckon he's hatched out in the city Underground, like where a lot of cracked lines come from. Could be a stool pigeon; the story is there's a mob downtown running a racket that's pretty widespread through Europe. The cops are wise but ain't moving any. This shows the set-up. My information is that Milan is the next dump for a conference of the inside boys. Spender. Watch him. This guy's got an angle and if he works it before we know where we are plenty cities will be wide open to this culture stuff they're aiming at.

I just stepped on this racket and slugged Spender. Maybe he ain't at the back of it. The picture don't get that far yet. I got a shot in at Humphrey and blew up the whole works and if they make a splash of it their yellow press they'll be wiser guys than I figure.

I reckon that's the way things are right now. The reception won't be kisses if I show up in the state capital. Gee, I'd laugh my head off to see the faces of those guys when they saw me parked on the doorstep. If I make a run for town I gotta private matter