We recently had to replace our central-heating boiler; too old, no longer serviceable. Next week we drive south to our little house in France, where the (even older) boiler is due for its annual health check. We fully expect the same outcome – if not now, very soon. Its future is diminishing.
As an old actor playing old characters, it’s good to feel serviceable still, although the recent production of On Golden Pond meant poor old Norman Thayer had to contend with my knees, my back, as well as his own declining memory and increasing palpitations.
A very old Yorkshire joke limps to mind. A very old Yorkshireman sat in a pub, sobbing. When the concerned barman asked him what was up, the old chap replied, “I’ve recently married a beautiful young woman, who loves me dearly and looks after my every need.” The barman said, “That’s nowt to fret about, surely!” “But”, said the old man through his tears, “I can’t remember where I live.”
Apologies to Company of Ten members and friends who were at my 70th birthday party (or the Wake for Jake – it almost coincided with my son’s sudden death, in one of those awful, almost Jacobean, collisions of comedy and tragedy). I had just played the part of Tom Eliot’s father-in-law in Michael Hasting’s play Tom and Viv.In reply to my question, “Any special talent?”, Eliot is given the wonderful line “I have a feeling for ditties which rhyme”.
With that in mind, I wrote and performed my only song. (Well, performed and song are gross exaggerations). It’s mainly a series of quotations from The Love-song of J. Alfred Prufrock, with a little help from Leonard Cohen thrown in for good measure; I think of it as Eliot’s reverse bucket-list: all the things he’ll never be able to do! Amazing though it may seem, the older you get, the shorter your future … The second poem is a twisted update on Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress.
Eliot’s Ditty that Rhymes
(Refrain, to be sung to any tune that’ll fit – keeping a little beat where indicated)
I grow old, I grow old.
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Do I dare to eat a peach?
Will I hear the mermaids singing // each to each?
I do not think they will sing for me,
or linger in those chambers // of the sea.
(x2)
Shall I part my hair behind?
Does it matter? Will // anyone mind?
I’m not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
My only role now is // mediocrity.
(x2)
Do I dare, do I dare,
To show my bald spot as // others stare?
An ageing Fool, they’ll sneer away,
who aches in all the places where he // used to play!
But that is not what I meant at all,
I’ll carry on regardless, going to // have a ball.
Take your time
Nothing works any more, I moan,
a waste of effort – leave me alone.
Take your time, she says. No hurry. My time?
The sand’s run out, my clock won’t chime
with yours. I want the eternal now,
can’t find the words to tell you how
the past has grown, the future shrunk.
Relax with me, she says, chill out, get drunk.
She smiles, looks at her watch. I hear
Time’s wingéd chariot drawing near.
Wonderful! Just wonderful!
And I’m loving that photo – checks & stripes! Do not adjust your sets.
Chels xx