Low life
Weak at the knees
Jeffrey Bernard
Last night I dreamed that I was back at Pangbourne again. Forty years on and I am still troubled by terrible anxiety in my sleep. Well, I am going to lay the ghost once and for all. I have just telephoned the college and was told that Founders Day is on 30 June and that the village now boasts an excellent restaurant. I shall go down there for the day. It might seem smaller and less frightening than it does in the middle of the night. Ideally I would like to take a coachload of ghosts with me and exorcise the lot of them in the one day. The party would include my last three wives, all the detectives at Vine Street police station, the Customs and Excise people, an ex- sergeant of the 14/20 King's Hussars, a certain surgeon and a psychopathic dwarf who used to whack people over the bonce with a car starting handle.
What else worries me? Not a lot. Only fire, drowning, a savage racehorse called Ubedizzy, being broke, being buried alive and pancreatitis. All these things enter this small room from time to time and get into bed with me. Waking up is a joy. A doctor once told me that my nightmares are caused by alcohol. I don't believe that. But that Pangbourne should have left such a mark on me is faintly ridiculous although, as my brother Oliver once said, perfect fear driveth out all love. I should have been a day boy at a girls' school.
But these dreams are disturbing my concentration and at the time of writing Tuesday — I should be examining, very closely, the Derby runners. The favourite is too short a price to do us many favours and now I simply hope that if he wins it won't damage the sainted bookmaker, Victor Chandler, too much. The biggest firms like Ladbrokes can go to the wall for all I care.
Talking of going to the wall, I read in the Sunday Telegraph and the Observer that I am being sued by the Inland Revenue for ten years' back tax amounting to £21,000. I wonder where these people get their in- formation from. If it is true then it is very disturbing indeed. It might even cause another nightmare. That extra nought has me covering up on the ropes. The thought of it has even put me off my grub.
As to that, I have been eating like a guardsman recently in the hope of putting on some weight. To no avail. It is quite scary. If I drop something on a floor and go
down to pick it up I can't get up unless there is some object to hold on to by which I can heave myself up again. Yesterday I had crab bisque followed by a sea trout for lunch and went home in the evening to some coq au vin I had made. I eat as well as that most days but I still have to sit down to put my trousers on in the morning, so weak am I. And now BUPA have asked me to write a quarterly column for their house magazine on matters pertaining to health. I can remember being healthy once years ago when I was boxing. It was the most uncomfortable feeling. It made me twitch with energy and I kept wanting to jump up and run around the block, maybe several blocks, shovel concrete and punch bags or people.
I'll say one thing for living in a clapped- out body, though. It is very peaceful. Sort of cosy, like sitting in front of a fire with your slippers on and your rottweiler at your feet. But I don't know why BUPA should have picked me out of a large pack of hacks all frightened of dying. It was they who accidentally discovered that I had diabetes. What else are they going to discover now? Korsakoff's psychosis? I wish they would find me some thigh muscles. Oh, and £21,000.
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