Low Life
Stunt man
Jeffrey Bernard
Here we are back in bed again, this time with some broken ribs that precipi- tated a lung infection. And they wonder why I don't turn up for lunch appoint- ments. Apart from the pain, and the threshold of that suprisingly climbs higher with the passing of the years, it's all been rather cosy. I've nearly finished the penicil- lin and I've knocked out 140 tea bags, but the leek and potato soup is holding out very well. I fell up some concrete steps last week — up hurts more than down — and knew immediately that the left rib cage had gone. It's happened before, fighting, aim- ing cars at ditches and during peace talks with militant feminists, but it doesn't hurt any the less. Coughing, laughing and the other thing are out of the question but it s almost a luxury to be as sick as a dog at home compared to being held prisoner in .a hospital ward. But the real bonus is that it has given me the opportunity to start working my video which I hired last June and have never used until this accident. There is a newsagent around the corner who has started hiring out videos and this week a friend has been carrying and fetching a strange variety of stuff that 1 have missed since I stopped going to the cinema some years ago. I was addicted to films until I was about 30 years old but then the cinema and certainly the theatre don t mix with an afternoon at the races or pub-going. A seat in the stalls is a tremendous soporific. Well, yesterday I finally caught up with The French Lieute- nant's Woman which was later counterba- lanced at a sleepless 2am by a Clint Eastwood movie, the most violent film I have ever seen. The day before that I saw my first ever soft porn movie and was utterly appalled at the lack of imagination that goes into the making of these farces. One particular ten-minute farce was set la a school classroom. Two dreadful looking tarts dressed up as schoolgirls in gym slips were being given a lecture by a pirriPlY youth playing the schoolmaster on th,e, subject of the erogenous zones. "Ooh sir, said one of them, "can you demonstrate on us please?" "Of course, my dear. Just steP up here." And so on. It was the most unerotic business I've ever seen and I speak as one who has seen the inside of the Guardian. Another episode took place la the changing cubicle of a dress shop and, another concerned the obligatory au pair girl. Dear oh dear. And speaking of the Guardian a strange thing happened this week when I was visited by an extremely attractive lady who arrived at the sick be to bestow my bedside table with fruit and advise me to pull myself together as the will. In spite of the drugs and the pain I suggested she join me under the duvet. She suddenly whipped a copy of the Guardia out of her shopping bag and held it up la front of me. The effect was exactly that .of holding a crucifix up in front of a vampire and I fell back on to my pillows screamiq' I suspect that Florence Nightingale was in fact looking for a mislaid shopping list With her lamp such is the practicality of these people. And now I hardly dare fall asleer for fear of dreaming that I am being nursed by Mrs Thatcher. Which reminds me that since I mentioned my nightmares in this column two weeks ago I have received many kind letters from readers. AParl from the fact that I'm shamefully neglectfnl about writing thank you letters I cannot -- will not — answer letters addressed to Geoffrey Bernard. I can understand the Freudian slip such as addressing letters to Aweberon Waugh or even Oberon Waugh but I do think it's rather rude. Keith Waterhouse sent me a nice note three Years ago in which he wrote, 'Dear Geoff, Isn't it awful to get to be 50 and people still do not know how to spell your fucking name.' But then the broken ribs have made Me rather serious of late verring towards downright pompous. The young doctor at the Middlesex who examined the X-ray Pictures of my chest and then showed them to me remarked, as people will who don't mess around with typewriters, that he wished he could write. I politely refrained from yawning and asked him why. He said, "There's a novel in these pictures. A sort of biography. The past is all there." Another bloody Sherlock Holmes. I had another look at the pictures at that and trite enough they reminded me of those old aerial reconnaissance pictures of Hamburg the day after the night before. All those broken railway sidings. It's got to stop. If it doesn't they'll be putting. my brain in traction.
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