It all sounds fun, doesn’t it? But I couldn’t even be bothered trying anything on in Georges this afternoon. It seemed too much effort. I should’ve taken a girlfriend so we could have encouraged one another to make purchases and then gone and had lunch in the Myers caf. But then I realised I didn’t have anyone to take. Once upon a time, Mrs Parish would’ve been a good practical, critical companion on such an excursion. She has style—well, a very conservative style, but she knows quality when she sees it. But I don’t feel I can call on her for such expediencies as friendship—our relationship is of a different nature now. Edith Knox doesn’t care a fig for fashion and would adore any old thing I held up to her to admire. Mrs Gordon Bridie … No, Susan looks so brilliant in everything herself that I really couldn’t spend an afternoon playing second fiddle to her. Besides, I’m not on close enough terms with her.

So, actually, I needed you. And without you, I went but I didn’t buy anything and Jo got rather cross with me when he came home and I had nothing to show.

Bring on the cooler weather. It’s been an appalling summer, and no sign of letting up yet. The heat has been too much for me this year, Tilde. I am on the point of melting.

Love Veda x

† † †

27 FEB 1967

Dear Tilde,

Before I talk about my own problems, as I do so regularly and predictably, I will respond properly and brightly to your last related offerings. Regarding the loss of your lambs: I don’t know how you bear that aspect of the farmer’s life. I remember worrying myself sick alongside Father when prices fell or foxes marauded or frosts happened when frosts were supposed to be long over. I feel my stomach do a little downwards flip even now, like a dying fish on a pier.

But you ask about the progress of my poetry collection … I feel my heart begin to flip like said dying fish. The situation is as follows: Having tweaked all my poems into what I thought were perfect little kernels of truth and sent them off (long ago, it seems now), I have just received a letter from my assigned editor at Vellum telling me he would like me to rework the following … according to the following editorial comments … and would like to cut blah, blah and blah … and he wonders about the logic of the sequencing … and feels an ‘emotional resonance is lacking’ in some of them and, presumably, could I please put one in? Well, how does one insert ‘emotional resonance’ into one’s poems—without, that is, pressing them into a kind of abject service? Would they like more obvious emotion, is that what they want? I loathe these vague requirements and suspect that fulfilling them will result in a book of poems I cannot bring myself to read.