From My Notebooks In 1974: Electrical Spaghetti
18th October 2026 |
In Buenos Aires an X-ray put my fears of lung cancer to rest; did some reconstruction work with a friend on the flying jacket which was worse for wear; and made friends with some students.
Friday October 11th
Yesterday had cholera and typhus jabs, in little clinic on the waterfront. Doctor entered the typhus on my card before I’d had it, so I had to have it. Man in suit (administrator?) said. don’t have typhoid jab because chloromycetin pills will cure it rapidly. Said I’d buy some. From there direct to Androgue to help Anniken finish the jacket. Sewing the thing together was difficult. I did nothing much myself but give moral support. She made a project of me and gave me gloves. Leather took time. Husband Dan O’Connellis 5 generations Argentine from railway workers. Have three daughters (in green school uniforms). He is sales manager for Dunlop. She is occupational therapist. Looks exactly like Twit [her brother in England who had a very pronounced aristocratic nose] which is disconcerting. But she is bright. Spent night there, then to Martinez to pack. Clinton and Stella have really become friendly. He was amused by the piece in El Pueblo in Villaguay, which said I was related to him. Gave him some books to take to hospital. [He was having a hip replacement.]
Raoul was on the phone, but I thought the weather not good enough to be worth the trouble of arranging to take him since he could go by car.
Hebe, one of my student friends, at the camp site in Mar del Plata
So I set off for Mar del Plata at 12. Got out of BA at 1.30. The road was very busy with weekend traffic all going my way. The people of BA treat the road to M de P as a racetrack 400 km long. They drive dangerously, to each other and specially to me. In the afternoon it began to get cold, and the last hour was freezing. I sang to take my mind off the cold. It worked. Got to M de P after dark but thought all I had to do was find Hebe’s flat. Got there to find a piece of paper stuck on the door saying they had gone to the Municipal Camping and giving confusing directions. I asked downstairs and was sent along the coast to the lighthouse. (Foro). After asking again I found it, but the camp site was big and full of people. I was lucky to find them (and to find the gloves which I dropped on the ground.)
In BA I went with Mercedes, Hebe, and Pacco to the Colon theatre for a concert. Claude Frank – Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1 and a symphonic piece. Histrionic young conductor, placid orchestra, perfect acoustics, said to be second only to La Scala. Afterwards to dinner at Basque restaurant with a sooty tree growing up in glass cage. Then to fashionable café on big avenue where everything was still going on at 3.30 am.
Also to assado at country cottage, and round BA on a Sunday. Mercedes (M de Menendez) in early twenties, reddish hair, pale complexion, slim. Jorge Fernandez her boyfriend lean, dreamy, light brown hair, wispy beard, his brother Pacco willowy, slightly camp without meaning to be, features compressed and extruding. Hebe tall, pretty, dark, full lips with corners on them in profile, strange nose, very broad at the bridge. Raoul Guerrero dark, intense, passionate, His girl – pretty, commonsense, working. Mercedes was very complimentary, and said the others also felt very impressed by me. Her praise was most eloquent and so, later, was Raoul’s. I don’t think it’s the views I express, so much as my behaviour which impresses them. Often, now, when the sympathy has been established and I am tempted to put into words the feelings and ideas that underly my behaviour I feel myself losing my way in generalities and facile remarks. Better to say less. It’s a great consolation to me to feel that my presence can have much value to others – I must be conveying much more than I realise by my manner – and, I suppose, by my omissions, when I see what a vocabulary of involuntary affectations young people use to keep their limbs and features busy.
I’m tempted to add that people in BA made less of an impression than people in Rio. Perhaps that’s not a valid comparison.
The British Embassy in BA – new. Great blocks of concrete, iron bars, bullet-proof glass. God knows what built-in security measures. Chargé d’affaires drives around with bodyguards.
Glyn Evans [from the embassy] strangely effete girl, insulated against experience. Finds Argentines stuffy and boring. We go to dinner at a noisy trattoria by the docks (it’s traditional) with another Second Secretary at the embassy called ––––– ? who IS boring and pretentious.
Saturday 12th to Monday 14th
[The small group of Argentine students I had come to know wanted me to go camping with them on the way to Bahia Blanca which was on my route.]
Camping. Slept two nights in tent, one in hammock. Day and a half revising electrical system of Triumph. New batteries (Argentine) too big for holder. Short circuiting thro’ saddle. (funny idea – sitting on all that current). The heat in the earthing wires has split the cable bundles open like a fruit. Fiddle about for ages switching lights from left hand switch to right. Lucas switch is much more durable. Keep finding short circuits in the system which turn out not to e (i.e. through the rectifier and through the white leads inside the headlamp case.)
Electrical spaghetti – need I say more!
We were camped in two areas on either side of a broken barbed wire fence near the sea shore. The eating area was in the camp grounds, a clearing among low trees which grew in clumps. The tents however were technically on private ground and somebody said we didn’t have to pay for that reason – a “viveza criolla.”
[Conceptually, viveza criolla is a sort of cleverness, a cunning determination to defy authority and ignore rules, but do so sneakily, surreptitiously, and successfully. At its best, it is a playful deviousness, a tongue-in-cheek humour for all to enjoy; at its worst, it results in a complete lack of social responsibility, morality, and widespread corruption. A good description from an unattributed source.]
The weather was patchy – nothing much happened. Nice fires. Pleasant times. One night when I was sleeping they went on the beach and argued about politics until dawn. Mercedes says it was quite iolent, and the rumblngs continued next day. They all said rather sadly, that every Argentinian was determined to stick to his own personal opinion – the art, or purpose, of compromise escapes them.
Here’s Raoul, serving breakfast – these were not my most brilliant photographs.
On Sunday the weather got worse but Raul decided to stay with me. Jorge did too. Mercedes wanted to but didn’t dare. That evening I brought much “fiambre” (cooked meats) back to camp, to find that they had been out to buy exactly the same stuff. We ate well and slept out (I in the hammock). Weather gradually deteriorated, but I hoped it would improve.
On Monday we tried to swim but water was freezing. Soldiers were shooting at targets on the beach, and when I saw lots of black figures appearing out at sea over the breakers I thought they were practicing some sort of commando landing operation by frogmen. But they were seals, sitting out on the reef.