Home life
Tripping up
Alice Thomas Ellis
Ihad a medical check-up a while ago and, if I am to believe the man in charge, the entire staff of the laboratory where they do these things was laid low by the fumes emanating from a phial containing a fluid ounce or two of the substance that runs (or perhaps 'lurches' is the mot juste) through my veins. He went on so long and eloquently that I have been shamed into total abstinence. I did try to explain feebly that my blood was Russo-Finnish and all the Russo-Finns had blood like that, but the man (who I think is a Muslim) pooh- poohed this excuse and said he'd never seen anything like it.
Stung, I removed myself from the occa- sions of sin — London parties, the pan cupboard in the back kitchen where I conceal the Scotch — and went for a solitary ride on the wagon. The maddening thing is that when I am alone I don't miss alcohol in the least — not a twinge, not a tremor, not a craving — but when it's there and other people are knocking it back I find it irresistible. Beryl is like me when it comes to abstaining in company. I say to her, 'Have a drink, lamb-chop,' and she says, 'Certainly-not-oh-all-right-thank-you- very-much,' all in one breath. We are deficient in moral fibre, I'm afraid. One of the parties I missed was the Spectator's, and another was my own. I do hope everyone had a good time.
Now we come to life's little ironies. I have never fallen over while drunk, or if I have I don't remember. Awash with clear mountain water (except I 'think it's got naturally occurring lead, radioactivity and dead sheep in it), I fell on my face. Wearing a galabea for comfort• and cool- ness, and carrying a tray, I tripped up- stairs. Had I had a drink this would not have happened. For one thing, I wouldn't have wanted any supper and therefore wouldn't have been carrying a tray, and for another, when I'm on automatic I'm much, much more careful. Everyone who is accustomed to wearing long skirts when three sheets to the wind knows perfectly well that in order to ascend steps with any hope of achieving the summit you need to hoick them up between finger and thumb so that the hem clears your feet, and tread carefully. Normally I do this when I've had a glass of sherry, but this time, sanguine With sobriety, I didn't. And I didn't drop the tray in order to save myself either — because the insouciance in relation to a bit of china and a wodge of bread and cheese Which a tot of Bristol Cream induces in one was absent in me. I'm going to have to adjust all my reactions. The unexpected- ness, and the unfairness, of this turn of events reminds me for some reason of one of the sayings of Janet.
She says that women's magazines always advise in their cookery columns that if you wish to give a dinner in order to impress somebody (usually a man, if you haven't got him yet, and his boss if you have) you must offer a dish with which you are entirely familiar and which you have pre- pared many times before. This, says Janet, is a load of old cobblers. Over-confident, careless and bored stiff with your special- ity, you will burn it, or curdle it, or forget to put it in the oven. What you should do is look up in a cookery book some intensely elaborate Indonesian or Mongolian dish full of ingredients you have never even heard of, and this will keep you on your toes. The ultimate subtlety is then to Pretend, when it lies steaming on.the table, that you frequently throw it together when You feel like relaxing from the more demanding aspects of the home cuisine. She's quite right, of course. She usually is, and when I've completed Osmosis and Institution — or should it be Institution and Osmosis? — I shall compile an anthology Of her utterances so that everyone can have the benefit. The only trouble (I didn't say SO earlier, not wanting to boast) is that I've given up smoking too, and I find it very, very difficult to write — or do anything without a fag clenched be- tween the teeth. I may never do anything ever again.
The test will come when I return home in a day or two. If I cannot drink my sherry When all around are slurping theirs, nor beg a fag from a passing teenager. „' It's going to be awfully difficult. Oh well. I never wanted to be a man anyway.
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