Low life
Flights of fancy
Jeffrey Bernard
Iwas trying to drink a cup of tea in °131 bath this morning and I dropped it in the water. I didn't get out at once but lay there, in the hot brown water in a sort of resigile°, despair. Have we travelled thus far, thought, to end up resembling a tea bag? It wouldn't have happened to a winner. BilAt then when I did get up and about an' fetched the Times, there was good news. Cyd Charisse is here in England. She has brought her legs with her too, as you could have seen by the photograph of her on the back page. This woman has probably destroyed more of my brain cells than anything that ever came out of Russia, Finland or Warrington. I have given her a lot of thought, as have many other men of my age. When I was at school we used to be besotted with film stars. I remember writing a fan letter to Veronica Lake and to my surprise getting a signed photograph of her which I pinned to the underside of my desk lid. Rita Hayworth was poured into a silver lame" dress in Gilda and in The Lady From Shanghai she was breathtaking. We corresponded. Then there was Ava Gard- ner in The Killers and looking at her in that I felt as though I had been winded by a punch to the stomach.
But I have also fancied some really rather ropey actresses. This may be be- cause one is caught up in a sartorial time warp. Virginia Mayo and Rhonda Fleming spring to mind and groin. Anne Sheridan, the Oomph Girl, was another. She started the business of sweaters. I am not what is commonly called a 'tit man' but there was something quite extraordinary about the aggressive thrust of her bust. But I am determined to meet Cyd Charisse. There are reservations though. My fantasies are detroyed by the idea of calling a beautiful woman Cyd or Sid and she happens to be married to that singer Tony Martin. Years ago when I was cavorting on the edge of an open-air swimming pool in Roehampton, he walked around the edge of it asking all the girls who were stretched out on the edge of it, 'Do you know who I am? I'm Tony Martin.' Yuck. The other thing I noticed apropos Cyd Charisse was that the Guardian very typically cropped her ankles and feet out of their picture of her. This was probably in deference to the dreadful people who read their ghastly woman's and education pages. Since Miss Charisse's legs go up to her throat perhaps they should have cropped her head. So who is there now? Is it simply age or isn't there anybody about to be besotted with? My current obsessions are ordinary women who have not appeared on the silver screen. Even my cleaning lady looks sensational when she wields the Hoover. Which reminds me, apart from tea in the bath, I found an omelette on the floor Yesterday morning. What happens at night is something of a mystery to me and I suppose the only way to find out just what does happen is to get hold of a television camera and to record everything from about 7 p.m. onwards. I am still trying to solve the mystery of the curry I found in one of my shoes. Another mystery was the note I found recently on the bedside table which just said 'Would you like to try again some time?' It wasn't even signed. As I have previously reported, I have woken up in Kings Lynn and at Bristol Temple Mead on the last train, but an omelette on the carpet is quite disconcert- ing. On close inspection I noticed that I or a mystery person had made it a cheese omelette, which denotes a certain amount of care and ambition. I was disappointed though on looking under the bed not to find a side salad.
The other thing I found recently on waking was an invitation to the annual dinner at the Royal Academy. It is almost unbelievable. Why me? Can they be simply asking people who know what they like this year? I have brothers who ooze poetry and art but I am a humble omelette-dropper who thinks that Giacometti was third in the Derby carrying Charles St George's col- ours. It means a dinner jacket of course, this dinner, and I hope I don't find anything strange in it the following morn- ing. I still haven't recovered from the shock of finding an uncooked, raw shish kebab in my blazer pocket last week.
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