I recently found a letter from my mother to a friend
It describes a visit to the open air theatre in Regents Park
My father rather admired the actress Belinda Lee
And as a birthday treat my mother took him to see
As You Like it as this was the first time that the actress
Who had previously acted in films had attempted Shakespeare
My mother who had studied his work rather liked her performance
And kept a few newspaper cuttings of the time
She was described as a high speed Rosalind by the Telegraph
The Financial Times noted her to be brown as a nut
As well as being fresh as a daisy and as pretty as a buttercup
I also found a couple of cuttings reporting the death of the actress in a car accident in 1961
What a waste was written in my mothers hand using her lovely purple ink
I thought of Camus and the absurdity of his death in a car accident the year before
My mother was an elegant woman who was gradually worn down by life
Tomorrow would have been her ninety-ninth birthday which I will subtly celebrate
She rests in my home town with my father and both are much missed
But I still have hundreds of her letters and cuttings to remember her by
Which I keep in a velvet lined box along with many family photographs