Low life
On the
rack
Jeffrey Bernard
At last I have reached the age where it is almost impossible to be unhappy. It is true that anxiety and boredom walk hand in hand through this flat and nightmares lie waiting in the dark, but love hasn't wrung a tear from these tired eyes for some 13 years now.
Anyway, I have run out of love and I am far more concerned these days that I might run out of cigarettes. My misery this morn- ing was caused by shirtmakers who make the buttonholes too small for the buttons. And I was not a little irritated to have it confirmed yesterday by my physiotherapist that the foot I broke nearly three months ago was set crooked. The biggest meta- tarsal sticks out, but at least it doesn't pain me so I do not intend to have it re-broken and put in plaster for another eight weeks.
And last Sunday was a mess. Hot on the heels of the drama student who was stand- ing in for Vera and who told me she couldn't hoover the sitting-room floor because there was already a plug in the wall socket I had a visit from two school- girls who also drove me to distraction and who lit my short fuse.
You would be surprised at some of the people who read The Spectator. The first girl, a sixth-former, didn't know how an answerphone works. She buzzed me for an age, went away for a while and came back to do it again. Eventually someone else let her in. When I eventually stopped shouting at her she explained that she didn't know how an answerphone worked because she goes to school in Cumbria.
But the second schoolgirl on Sunday took the biscuit. I asked her, because of my various disabilities, to help me with my supper by seasoning a chicken, putting some butter on it and then banging it in the oven so that I could turn it on later. This she did and later I found that she had put it straight on the rack without a baking tray. I burned myself getting it out with one hand
while the other hand was holding on to the dresser for support. In the morning, the substitute home help kindly washed the fat off the kitchen floor, and my hand is blis- tered. As an added bonus she left the milk out of the fridge so I had no tea on Mon- day morning.
This particular schoolgirl is sweet and 16. She is reading for her A levels and studying history, English, the classics and philoso- phy. What she ought to be reading is domestic science and learning how to roast a bloody chicken, but I suppose we should be grateful for the fact that she is not studying nuclear physics or medicine. What bombs, what crooked bones we could expect then.
And now Monica is at death's door and I am a little distraught. The typewriter mechanic who called said there was very little life left in her, but worse still she has no sisters because electric typewriters are obsolete and they only make electronic jobs now. How I curse modern technologY. If any London reader knows where I could get a replacement I would be grateful and relieved to know. I cannot work much that is modern and I am still not yet on intimate terms with my microwave.
But where shall I bury Monica? I don't think she deserves a rubbish tip and I think I shall get someone to bury her with full honours, whatever they are, in Soho Square. Another marriage ended.
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