Low life
A limp year
Jeffrey Bernard Last Wednesday was the anniversary of having my right leg amputated. It doesn't seem like a year ago. With the loss of inde- pendence and the subsequent scene-change of my home being more or less turned into an open prison, it feels more like three years ago. Time no longer flies as I watch the sun describe an arc in the sky from the time that Vera presents me with tea and breakfast until Augustine makes me some supper and bewails the fact that she has again not won the National Lottery.
More to the point and nearer to my heart, is the fact that I may lose the beloved Vera to show-business. At the beginning of the week I had a letter from a nutcase in Scotland who suggested that, after the success of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, Keith Waterhouse and I should write a musical called Vera. I now call her Evita and I think it is a very good idea, although it might involve digging up Ethel Merman to play the title role. I can visu- alise good set pieces with a large chorus for occasions such as Vera going shopping for me in the market, although that smacks a bit of My Fair Lady and I am no Professor Higgins. And, while I have introduced her to a Duchess and a couple of film stars, the fact remains that I am as putty in Vera's hands and am glad to be so. I suppose that another scene with chorus could be made out of what I call the Committee, i.e. the old busybodies who sit about just inside the front door, maliciously gossiping about the other tenants of this block which I had half hoped would be blown away by a semi-hur- ricane we had last week.
But, as I say, at this moment it is inevitable that my thoughts should keep returning to that day last year. I have man- aged somehow to blot most of it out of my mind but I did suddenly remember last week or sometime that Mr Cobb had to postpone the operation for 24 hours because of a couple of emergency cases, and that gave me a day and a night to pon- der the electric saw and its aftermath. I haven't shed a tear since, although some- body phoned me up last Sunday afternoon to enquire whether I had wept watching the final episode of Little Lord Fauntleroy. I have to admit that, although my eyes began to mist over a little, I laughed when the credits started to roll to see that his Lord- ship's enormous, almost donkey-sized dog has as its real name, Rommel. It has prompted me to re-name the large Amazo- nian bully in my aquarium, Keitel, after one of Hitler's more astute and nastier Generals who was hanged at Nuremburg.
The maintenance man who cleans the aquarium every month told me that the fish are in extraordinarily good health, although God knows how you can tell if a fish is well or not by looking at it. Also, my palm tree is thriving and I find it odd that I impart life to others while I have myself become almost putrescent. And, looking on the gloomier side of things, I wouldn't be in the least sur- prised if, by the time this column appears in print, an innocent member of the public has been killed by the Animal Rights brigade who I have been. watching on television stampeding animals so as to make butchers almost redundant. And what a pity it is that protesters always look like protesters. We all wear uniforms of a sort — you can tell a stockbroker from a navvy — but protesters, like Guardian readers, are dishevelled, liber- al, would-be intellectual, Hampstead stereo- types. We already know 'The Suits' and now we have 'The Duffle Coats', surely a good new strip cartoon for the likes of Heath.
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