Low life
Don't think
Jeffrey Bernard
T don't see her very often nowadays and 1 when I do it's accidental; pure chance. Yesterday, cruising through a Wardour Street traffic jam, I spotted her crossing the road, elegant as ever, quite stunning to me, and my stomach gave a lurch as I tried to make up my mind whether to be sick or weep. Such is the sight of lost property and you'd think that after 18 months it wouldn't be quite so painful. The last time I bumped into her, a few weeks ago, I just managed to refrain from uttering the facetious remark that always springs to mind as I feel like a boy at the end of a school game, albeit a desperate game. 'Can I have my balls back please?' Yes, it's been a down week and if these things go in cycles then I don't like being me at the moment and I wouldn't want to be many of my friends either, who've got off to a horren- dous year. It may not sound so to you but this column doesn't go in for self-pity; I just state the facts and I do like to remind all of you out there — for the umpteenth time — that life is a bowl of shit and not cherries.
Anyway, what it all reminded me of was the unsolicited visit I once got from a
psychiatrist in the Royal Free when I was there scratching the wallpaper off with my fingernails because of pancreatitis. The well-meaning shrink sat by my bed for a good two hours discussing boozing mainly, but try as I did I couldn't get him to dif- ferentiate between sadness, unhappiness and depression. Sadness, I told him was, in my opinion, a chronic illness contracted in early childhood for which there is no cure whatsoever and which lasts a lifetime. The pain of loss lasts a mere two to three years while depression frequently fades away at opening time although it returns the next morning.
My friend Clive, a musician of note, and I have developed a new superstition about just how ghastly the week's going to be and it's all down to who's the composer of the week on Radio 3. Quite rightly, a couple of weeks ago, we predicted we were in for a miserable week when Max Bruch was your man. When Cesar Franck was the man I damn near died. But of course no one has the right to be happy. As I say, glancing around at my friends and acquaintances I'm appalled at just how low they are now and I wonder just what and where the cure lies.
Cyril Connolly lists a load of angst- relieving drugs in The Unquiet Grave — the smell of citrus groves and coffee, dinner with friends, a cheque in the post etc — but these are very temporary measures. No, what you have to do is to stop thinking altogether. Just breathe, eat and sleep, but don't think. One of the happiest men I've ever met is a window cleaner whose entire being centres around the fortunes of Tot- tenham Hotspur. I used to think he was an utter idiot but he has the fixed smile of a doll, is a complete stranger to debt, unre- quited love, and is singularly uninterested in himself. Bliss.
An enormous amount of women are blissfully happy too, thanks to their tremendous recuperative powers stemming from their practicality. Not the ones I know though. They've caught misery — like catching a cold — from the men they've known. Luckily I'm an optimist. Next week's composer on Radio 3 may be Beet- hoven or Mozart. Tomorrow Miss Right may walk around the corner. A job may be in the offing, a trip abroad and the renewed realisation that it's all quite ridiculous.
I'll tell you what accounts for this week's gloom. It's the kind letters I've received from Spectator readers plus the angry ones from Cosmopolitan readers upset by a silly article 1 wrote about women having no sense of the absurd. Well, of course they have. Four of them have married me. And unless Saint Saens is composer of the week soon perhaps I'll find a fifth. No, enough's enough. The time has come to take up win- dow cleaning and renew my support for Ipswich Town Football Club. Meanwhile, I can't really complain. I woke up with £25 today and I'm just off to the Coach and Horses for 'the one'. By 2 p.m. there won't be a thought in my head to aggravate the smooth running of this truly wonderful life.
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