Low life
Clapped out
Jeffrey Bernard
Itook my daughter to lunch at the Bombay Brasserie this week and what an excellent place it is. Completely wasted on hordes of sales managers, reps and travellers with shiny trouser bottoms, droopy moustaches, beer guts, a nasty contempt for women, company cars and a fund of bad dirty jokes. There is little more disgusting than a stag gathering. But we had a very good meal in spite of mistakenly picking a dollop of something far too hot from the buffet. There was no cream to go with the fruit salad but I suppose that is something to do with sacred cows.
Over lunch she told me that she wants to emigrate to either America or Australia. I said that I would help her to Australia but not to the'States which is far too dangerous for someone too young to be streetwise. Yes, Australia is the place. What the hell is there here and what will be 'here in ten year's time? Working in Harrods can't be the end of the line. It shouldn't be anyway unless you own it. But it was a grey, miserable day. We took a taxi up to town where I had to buy some books at Heywood Hill, and what a delight that shop is. Anywhere else would put Moby Dick under angling in the sports books shelves. Then we got a taxi to the Groucho Club where we had tea. She regards my excessive use of taxis with some sort of bemused admiration. A treat. In the Groucho she had a slab of white chocolate. She was wearing a black leather jacket and I suppose a motorbike will be the next thing on the shopping list. So I sit here.. wondering what will become of her and wondering whether I shall ever see her again after I have put her on an aeroplane to Sydney. In fact I've been awake all night thinking about it, bathed in the light from the wards of the genito-urinary hospital opposite my windows. I have been wondering about the inmates there as well. It strikes some sort of tenor in me but it isn't so much the genitals that need love, care and concern as the mind and metaphorical heart. I can see into a ward when their lights are on and I think about them lying there with their bladders up the spout, Aids, syphilis and heaven knows what else. It is so easy to avoid Aids. A bottle of vodka a day will do it. A slower train to the same terminus.
After taking Isabel to tea I met an old friend Bill in the pub. We were locked up together in hospital 16 years ago. In those days he drank his way through his furni- ture, selling everything bar his bed to get the money for a drink. He has been on Perrier for the last three years and I think it is very gutsy of him to come into the pub and buy us a drink without falling off his wagon. He isn't miserable either as are most non-drinking alcoholics. He has had a heart attack since being 'dry' but death can be strangely elusive. Touch wood. So I sit here in my new home at 4 a.m., thinking about Aids, Australia, drink and death. I have just drunk six cups of tea and am now switching to a vodka in the hope of getting an hour's sleep. The body clock has gone quite mad. I sleep in the evening and lie awake for most the night wearing out tapes of Mozart and brooding about all sorts of trivialities.
One of them is whether or not to buy a small microwave oven. Marks and Spencer have started a new line. Red cabbage. Their pre-cooked stuff is so good I am seriously thinking of giving up cooking and living off their food shelves. Perhaps it might make the room stink. I don't know. A Maltese man years ago killed someone in a hamburger joint in Leicester Square by shoving his head in a microwave oven and keeping it there for a minute or two. Another way out, I suppose. And a more harmless Maltese man is coming today to put bookshelves up for me. It is to cost an arm and a leg, timber being the price it is today, but oh, the joy of being reunited with my books. How I have missed them.
And now the clap hospital behind me have just switched on their air-conditioning apparatus and the noise is disconcerting. I drink to their recoveries and wonder do they wonder was it all worth it? Probably. It is extraordinary just what seems to be a good thing at the time. And that has me thinking about racehorses yet again.
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