Low life
French notes
Jeffrey Bernard
phis is the fifth week in bed now and I
think the brain is going. The legs have certainly gone and so has the libido — mer- ciful release — and I don't want a drink. I'm forcing myself to smoke since a man has to do something, otherwise I'm plugged myself thinking and Radio 3 in the hope into LBC for the news, television to stop
that they will occasionally play something good and not just play things because they're obscure. Obscurity apart they do fill in the time twixt the worthwhile with some dreadful little pieces. To eat a stale egg for breakfast to the accompaniment of Gounod is pretty sick-making. My suspicions con- cerning Gounod were confirmed when I looked him up in the Oxford Companion to Music and read that he once intended to write a Mass for Rheims Cathedral while kneeling on the stone that the paranoid, les- bian, feminist transvestite, Joan of Arc, knelt on at the Coronation of Charles VII.
Another French worm the Radio 3 early bird can frequently catch is Saint-Saens, who furnished his own museum in Dieppe with his own wretched relics including his aunt's pincushion. Cesar Franck, who could be forgiven anything if he'd just writ- ten the sonata for violin and piano and then shut up shop, is another one who keeps tur- ning up for breakfast by my bedside. Not to be outdone by a shortage of pincushions in the family, he got hit over the head by the pole of a horse omnibus on his way to give a music lesson. Yet another breakfast was ruined recently by accidentally hearing the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Yet Dukas has gone up considerably in my estimation since I read that 'he burnt the products of over a quarter of a century's labour' just before he died. Other Radio 3 acquaintances, not all of them mad and boring — there's lovely Lully —; include Roussel and Alkan. They certainly thought up some odd ways to go once they started tapping for coda. Roussel died of injuries sustained in a bicycle acci- dent which is slightly bizarre but Alkan takes the biscuit. Reaching for his favourite book one day which was lodged in a monster bookcase, it was either the Talmud or the Koran, the said bookcase toppled over and crushed him to death.
The other thing this captive audience has suddenly become horribly aware of is our television — the best in the world so I'm told. I take my hat off to Richard Ingrams for watching what little he does. Of the four channels combined I reckon to see as little as the sum total of two hours a day that isn't rock bottom. I gather that all the English want to see is stars. At least that's what the television bosses seem to think. When I need the star of a ghastly TV series to tell me how to cope with day to day ex-
reach for my favourite istence then I'll Melvyn Bragg and let the toppling bookcase do the rest.
The fact that I've also got a little hooked on LBC in the mad belief that it's keeping me in touch with the outside world is also a matter of concern. What LBC does, in fact, is to inform me every morning that the traf- fic lights at the junction of George Street and Baker Street aren't working. Also that there's a blockage in the Rotherhithe Tun- nel but that flights from Hong Kong are on time. They too though, like telly, have their whizz kids like Bragg and Parky, and Sue Jamieson (if that's how she spells it) talks about something called 'The Arts'. When a woman gets her teeth around the artistic bit I get acutely embarrassed and am always reminded of what Dr Johnson said about women preaching. I suppose if you're frightened of being laughed at it's bound to make you terribly, terribly sincere. Impor- tant too. Ah well, back to Myerbeer. I bet you didn't know his real name was Beer and that he bunged the Myer on the front. There's cowardice for you.
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