The Shakespeare Code

 

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code….

Our Chief Agent, Stewart Trotter, was a great friend of the actress and poet Charlotte Mitchell….

….who acted in many films, television series and plays….

….and was the only woman EVER to have appeared in The Goon Show….

She wrote a lot of her own revue material…..

And often read her own poetry on Radio 4….

….especially on Woman’s Hour.

She published three books of verse……

……Ten Burnt Saucepans, I want to go Home and Just in Case……

…… and one of her poems was chosen to be included in The Nation’s Favourite Comic Verse.

Stewart was going through the back files of The Shakespeare Code and made a wonderful discovery….

….a handful of poems which Charlotte – or Bunty as she was called by her friends – had given him for safe-keeping before her death.

These, as far as we know, have never been published or broadcast.

Here is one, entitled, The Penultimate Bit, which deals with what, for Bunty, was a wonderful moment between Motherhood and Old Age….

•

THE PENULTIMATE BIT

Between a running, mopping, smiling,

Frowning, cooking Mum

 

and a Grandma

getting hard of hearing

 

lost her glasses, always peering

whose children have to fetch and take her

persuade, cajole and sometimes make her,

there is the penultimate bit

to which I’ve lately come –

Too early to be like a child

too late to be too mad and wild

when I’m not certain if I should

serve the old dears their Xmas lunch

or sit

and scoff the Christmas pud myself

admit I’m tired – give in, give up

and take a cup

of kindness for

O Lor!

but that’s not what to do at all

or so I’m told

I should be going to evening classes

before I’m really old –

wait a minute – here’ the gist –

Let me just pursue this list –

‘Flamenco dancing, Glass blowing

Wind ensemble, Cactus growing,

Millinery and love-making –

whoops, that was a Freudian slip,

Millinery and glove-making –

Faberge eggcraft and collage

Ocean navigation?’

Er, no thank you, no, not I –

Back to thinking, back to wa,lking

Back to quiet contemplation –

This part of life is surely so

that I can lounge, relax without

too many ailments on the go –

But I should fill this ageing bit

with jogging here, abseiling there

and forking out on gear and kit

which I spose might be improving

less of thinking, more of moving.

 

But all my life I’ve longed for this

Lest of “must” and “oughts” – it’s brill

and when I want to I’ll lie still

and stare up calmly at the sky

pondering on past joy and sorrow

while other people hurry by

…..I may not feel like this tomorrow.

© Charlotte Mitchell 1964

End-note from Stewart Trotter:

After Trixie the Cat had typed out Bunty’s poem,. the computer auto-corrected her idiosyncratic, crafted punctuation – punctuation which gives you a clue to the woman she was and the voice she had.

One piece of punctuation the computer STILL refuses to set: there should be a dash and not a row of dots to introduce the final line.

How Bunty would have laughed!  She hated computers – and forbad me to post her work on the Internet.

But this poem is, I think, so warm, human and good that I am defying her.

We can sort it out in Heaven.

S.T.

To read more poems by Charlotte Mitchell, please click: HERE!