My play what I wrote…

… and giving you wonderful people a break

A very old photo of a coroners court courtesy of The London Archives

I can never be accused of being predictable with my Substack, this week’s maybe completely off the eclectic eccentricity scale. Even the chief rabbit 🐇 has headed for the darkest part of his warren. However, ‘My play what I wrote’ is at the very bottom of this post as it comes with a trigger warning - it deals with suicide.

For my newer subscribers, the head rabbit 🐇 refers to earlier ramblings when I would burrow down into rabbit warrens, badger sets, fox dens and otter 🦦 holts researching articles, something I still do in occasionally, but have learnt that can be very difficult exercise for someone as disorganised as moi 🤣 and sends me down so many different tunnels, often happily loosing 6 hours. The head rabbit has sort of stayed with me. Eccentric I know.

Back on track. I have decided to take a break over the coming months to think about my Substack and where I am going with, possibly to even store up some posts, unlikely I know. Substack had changed and developed considerably over the last four years. It is now a very crowded, complex and multifaceted space. Iam not complaining that's life. I realise I need to develop and deliver more for my subscribers. There are three options:

a) say goodbye to Substack and take my leave - how pompous that sounds or,

b) change, revamp and do things differently. Although I need to understand my limitations.

c) do nothing, carry on as I am and very probably wither on the vine and bird you all rigid.

I need to decide how to move forwar, unfortunately it is not just a case of turning up and writing each week as I do now, I need to give myself serous brain ache.

I am SO grateful to everyone of you who supports my Substack. I will be back to tell you about the future of Growing Old & Owning The Real World and see you all on the other side, sometime in August.

Prompt

Think of your ideal day:

1. Who would you see? Maybe someone you don't see that often

2. What would you do? You have unlimited funds

3. Where would you do? You can ask Scottie to beam you up to anywhere (Star Trek reference)

4. What would you eat and where? As before you have unlimited funds and Scottie to beam you up, you can cook or have a chef

The a) Write a paragraph explaining why and b) think of ways to make your dreams come true - all legal of course.

Hopefully this gives you food for thought.

A mahoosive thank you to all of my subscribers for sticking with my eclectic, eccentric rambles down the rabbit warren 🐇, fox 🦊 dens, badger 🦡 sets and otter 🦦 holts, and everyone else who reads my posts

Growing Old is free to all. If you have not already, please do subscribe and share with others. It makes an old curmudgeon very happy and inspired to keep writing. Although apologies as normal service will be resumed sometime in August ❤️

TRIGGER WARNING:THE FOLLOWING REFERS TO SUICIDE

I started writing this a few years after my mother died. I wanted to try and do a play about suicide which captured the complex relationships, feelings and uncertainties, through my own experience of the Coroners Court. I tried to inject a sense of humour into proceedings using my, divorced, parents as the main characters. They did get on well after about 10 years post divorce in the 1960s. Whilst, my mother was an extremely difficult individual with an evil streak, she was super intelligent with a very quick mind, and tongue. My father was the exact opposite. Calm and kind without a malicious bone in his body. They were both successful lawyers but if very different ways. Father (TOM) was a country conveyancing in an old firm established by his father. Mother (MARGARET) worked as a barrister, as a solicitor big London city firms and in Hong Kong. Names have been changed. She died in 2003

Title: The Final Demise of Margaret Hutchinson

Scene One: The Beginning of the End

The Coroners Court: R two large leather chairs. Between the chairs is a small table with a bottle of gin, a bottle of tonic and two glasses. C facing the audience, there is a court room style ‘bench’ with a large chair behind, a large desk sign says CORONER. RC witness box, L a smaller table with two chairs at an angle to the audience, ULC grandfather clock

MARGARET enters and walks towards the audience.

MARGARET: (talking to herself) So this is it.

MARGARET looks at the Coroner’s bench then the witness box.

MARGARET: This is death. What a strange place to end up. Margaret wanders around the court. A bit like old times, entering the court ready for battle, a slight feeling of fear fluttering in the pit of one’s stomach, waiting for proceedings to start and the judge to decide your clients fate.

TOM enters and walks up behind MARGARET.

TOM: Hello, Margaret. Looking as stylish as ever, death clearly becomes you.

MARGARET jumps, stops pacing and turns to face TOM.

MARGARET: What the hell are you doing here?

TOM: Nice to see you too, a warm welcome as ever. I’m here to support as you await your verdict.

MARGARET: I always knew you were a bit lacking in the upstairs department. This is a coroner’s court. I’m not on trial nor in anyway the accused. You can’t try the dead?

TOM: I may not match up to your superior intellect, but like it or not I’m here to stay.

MARGARET: I really don’t want to spend the day listening to your banal drivel. (pause) Oh dear, I forgot, you’re dead, so you have nothing better to do.

TOM: I’m sure I can think of a million better things to do than spend the day with my deceased ex wife.

MARGARET walks over to TOM and inspects his face very closely

MARGARET: You don’t seem to have aged much in the last fifteen years.

TOM: A complement?

MARGARET: I didn't say you looked any better. Just the same raddled face I remembered.

TOM: One of the few advantages of being dead, not ageing.

TOM walks towards and sits down in one of the leather chairs

TOM: The last time we were in court together was over forty years ago. Our divorce I believe.

MARGARET: What a relief that day was.

TOM: For all of us. Do you ever wonder if things would’ve been different if we’d stayed married? Would you have been happier, wealthier, lived a fuller life? Would you or even both of us still be alive?

MARGARET: I can’t say it keeps me awake at night. Maybe you’d have actually got off your derrière and done something with your life. Rather than sitting by the fire waiting for life to come to you and playing at being a solicitor in sleepy country firm

TOM starts to talk MARGARET has wandered off.

MARGARET: I doubt I’d have been happy. Being married to you was a living nightmare, or should I say hell, buried up to my neck in a rambling, draughty old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, playing the squire’s wife. Playing Mummy and Daddy to the little brood.

TOM: You loved all the trappings, the parties, the nanny, the trips to London to get your hair done and replenish your wardrobe.

Margaret (interrupting): Being bored ridged the rest of the time.

TOM: I may’ve been boring, but at least I’m not the one waiting for a coroner to pass judgment on whether I killed myself, or not.

MARGARET: No, you didn’t need a coroner; you just boringly snuffed it peacefully in a hospital bed.

TOM: Peaceful is definitely not a word I would use for your death; nor for your life for that matter.

MARGARET: What was wrong with having a bit of a spark now and then?

TOM: That would depend on what you mean by a bit of spark; a light pleasurable tingle or 10,000 volts that addles your brain. You were definitely the latter.

MARGARET: At least I died in style, not just through some boring illness, brought about by rich food, too much alcohol, too little exercise and boredom.

TOM ignores MARGARET and picks up the gin bottle on the table.

TOM: Gin and tonic?

MARGARET: How very civilised. Comfortable chairs and a stiff drink for, as you put it, the accused. Times have changed. I am sure this is not available to your average victim.

TOM: How would you know? You haven’t died before.

MARGARET: True

TOM pours a gin and tonic into each glass.

TOM: No ice or lemon I’m afraid.

MARGARET: Clearly standards aren’t what they should be here. I’ll complain to management.

TOM: If you can work out who they are.

MARGARET wanders back to the coroners bench, picks up a book & flicks through the pages

MARGARET: Coroner’s Court Law and Practice, the coroner’s bible. Why have it on the desk, surely they employ people who know their law? This is the City of London Coroner’s Court after all.

MARGARET puts the book down and wanders over to the witness box, she gets into the witness box.

MARGARET: I, Margaret Hutchinson, swear by almighty God I shall tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

TOM: Do you think people who take their own life are covered by an oath to God?

MARGARET: Who knows? I’m aethiest anyway

TOM: It doesn’t really matter, the deceased, whether victim, or as in your case accused, can’t enter the witness box. Well not yet anyway, you never know what may happen in the future.

MARGARET: I do wish you would stop referring to me as the accused.

TOM: For centuries it was legally wrong to take a life, even your own. It was not until the 1961 Suicide Act 1961, pushed through by Sir Charles Fletcher-Cooke, that is was no longer a criminal offence to attempt to take your own life.

MARGARET: Stop showing off. It's all a matter of opinion now. People have the right to decide their own ending.

TOM: Whilst, I don’t agree with that stance many still feel attempting to take your own life is criminal. Thank God we’re not here to debate the morality of suicide, just to get a coroner’s verdict on cause of death.

MARGARET wanders over to the clock

MARGARET: Talking of which, it’s nearly eleven o’clock. All this waiting around is ridiculous, I thought that was it, when my last breath left my lungs, all over, no more recriminations, just blackness, nothingness. I’d reached the light at the end of the tunnel. Yet here I am.

TOM: All in good time. Do come and sit down, and stop fiddling with things.

MARGARET: What’s your problem? Nobody can see or hear me. (PAUSE) Can they?

TOM: No, lucky buggers.

MARGARET goes and sits next to TOM. She takes a large slurp of gin and tonic

MARGARET: I see you haven’t lost your touch; you can still pour a decent G and T, ice or no ice.

TOM: What another complement? Now be a good girl and behave yourself.

MARGARET: Don’t be so patronising, I’ll behave how I like.

TOM: there was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. Sshhh let the fun begin, I can hear the coroner coming down the corridor.

THE CORONER enters right carrying some files and walks over to the ‘bench’, sits down and places the files in front of him. MARGARET watches The Coroner enter.

MARGARET: What makes you think that’s the coroner?

TOM: Who do you think he is?

MARGARET: The clerk.

TOM: In that suit? Clerk’s wages would need to have improved considerably to afford designer suits.

MARGARET sneers at TOM

MARGARET: Let the scrutiny begin. Did she jump, was she pushed or was it accidental?

TOM: Do you actually know the answer, Margaret?

MARGARET: It is for me to know, the coroner to decide, and you Tom, to await the verdict.

TOM: Are you going to be like this all the way through?

MARGARET: Maybe, maybe not

TOM: Its a great shame the coroner cannot see or hear you. It might aid his verdict.

THE CORONER organises the files at the top of the desk and switches on the laptop computer. MARGARET watches intently.

MARGARET: Coroners are like police officers, they look like they have just got out of nappies.

TOM: You mean you’re old, (pause) and very dead of course.

MARGARET sneers at TOM

MARGARET: I do hope she knows what she’s doing.

TOM: Isn’t she one good enough for you then? What did you expect? Lord Chief Justice Scarman presiding, perhaps?

MARGARET: Don’t be so stupid, Tom, Scarman died years ago. But I’d have thought…

MARGARET stops in mid sentence. TOM picks up his glass and raises it to MARGARET

TOM: Yes, I agree, I maybe stupid, but I know you so well. Now shut up and listen

MARGARET sneers at TOM. KATIE - their daughter, enters carrying a handbag and some papers………