Low life
Ups and downs
Jeffrey Bernard
Out of doors it has been a somewhat high life recently and here in my flat it has been very low indeed. Last Saturday at Newmarket, 2,000 Guineas day, I was rub- bing shoulders with millionaires and Charles Benson at a superb pre-race cham- pagne and buffet lunch and the day before in London I had lunch with Alice Thomas Ellis. The latter occasion was a slice of high life that not even Taki would aspire to. But in the early morning and as soon as the sun has gone down it has been very low indeed. I see the signs of a nasty descent. When you aim a dirty tissue at a waste-paper basket and it misses and you can't be bothered to pick it up, look out. When you go two days without shaving, feel too lazy to wash up, water the plants, empty the ashtrays, go to the launderette,' iron a shirt or pay the milkman and just lie there on your bed nur- sing a stomach slightly distended with gastritis and wondering just why it is that the world does not owe you a living, a good woman, the urge to work and a less haunted face then it's time to pull yourself together, if you happen to have the blueprint for 'together'.
Now why is it that people like Robert Sangster never miss the waste-paper basket? Possibly because they haven't got anything to throw away. And, Charles St George's Newmarket lunch apart, I have to own up to sinking so low as to have lived on frozen food for the past two days. A Birds Eye cod steak in mushroom-3auce doesn't exactly in- spire one to rape a typewriter and on the Bank Holiday Monday I watched no less than four consecutive films on television. I'd very much like to reverse the location and time of day of these highs and lows. I feel I ought to spring clean, empty the dustbins, spend a bomb at Sketchley's, pluck up the courage to see what or who is under the bed and attend to them, and then, and only then, go out for lunch at Claridge's and fall asleep with my face in the soup, burn holes in the tablecloth and reveal the holes in my socks as the waiters eject me. Those of you who aren't addicted to extreme positions or situations probably don't understand, and good for you. Stay in your happy medium as long as you can.
The late lamented painter Robert McBryde summed it up. I saw him one mor- ning actually ironing a shirt with a table- spoon he kept holding over a gas-stove flame. He was a real stickler. Then, of course, he'd go out and by evening most likely he would have spewed up a litre of
wine over that shirt. I suppose the secret of a well kept, orderly life is to care all the time. McBryde was awfully good in the morning. I was very good all the time on the wagon between 1972 and 1975, even taking books off the shelf to dust them, would you believe. In fact I became so caring that it was only a sudden bottle of whisky that stopped me blowing my brains out. (And please don't tell me I would have to be a sniper to do that.) But talking vaguely of a sort of squalor, I made a fairly rare visit to the old Colony Room Club the other day to meet Cosmo Landesman who interviewed me for Time Out. I fear I gave too much away and if you're listening out there, Cosmo, please don't be too unkind. On second thoughts, sex, alcohol and horseracing haven't really destroyed me, they've simply impeded the progress to Haslemere where, as some readers may remember, I always intended to settle down with a wife, two children one of each sort, of course — a lawn mower, Ford Escort and steady job. Let's drop it unless you really need the money. Anyway, I stand for everything Time Out readers despise. Instead, since you're not a man of extremes, why don't you write to our editor here and suggest a column inbetween Taki and me? You could call it 'Still life'.
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