Low life
Blur blur
Jeffrey Bernard
Ihave just had to stop the newspapers. I can't read them any more. In fact I can't read anything smaller than the letters on the keys of my typewriter. It is annoying, frustrating and extremely inconvenient. I am addicted to newspapers, there is no other word for it. I would very much like to know what is going on in England but all I can get on my radio and blurred television set is news of the Gulf war. I was also in the middle of reading four books.
Somebody has told me that what I have is called diabetic retinitis, but whatever it is the eye man at University College Hospital cannot see me for another seven weeks. By that time I probably won't be able to see him either. If the circulation gets any worse I shall be able not only to make facetious jokes about being blind drunk but legless too. Food has also become less fun and I am living out of my blender now on avoca- do and yoghurt sauce plus banana or what- ever milkshakes.
At least I recognise familiar faces by the cut of their jib. Sometimes you can sense who you are with, as in the case of Nor- man, which is like knowing perfectly well that there is a rat under the bed or a cobra in it. But there are some faces that have always been blurred, the pub bore and the man who never buys a drink. You don't need to see them. They just buzz like flies against a window-pane. What I would far rather see are the runners and riders at Cheltenham and the forthcoming Test matches against India.
So, what else? Well, I came across a taxi- driver last week who told me that the recent cold weather was due to the fact that they pulled down the Berlin Wall so enabling the blizzards to get through from Siberia. I was tempted to tell him just why he was a taxi-driver but that would have been as cruel as the winter's wind itself. But I know the mate for him. She is a woman who used to hang around Soho and who was thrown out of a lunatic asylum because, as the resident Irish psychiatrist said, 'You'll have to go. You're driving all my patients mad.' I think perhaps taxi- drivers get punch-drunk just as bus- and truck-drivers allegedly get stomach ulcers.
But I must recommend the taxi firm I use in London, Meadway Cars. Although
cheaper than the conventional black cabs they are cars and therefore there is no par- tition between driver and passenger. You are a captive sounding board. I think I have mentioned here that I have been talked through the Burma campaign but I have also been told of infallible systems of back- ing winners, the ins and outs of the wine trade, the mysterious ways of women, what's wrong with British football, the cost of living/property/a night on the town and now the Gulf war. With such people at my disposal I don't need to be able to read.
It is awful how 90 per cent of the popula- tion have become Gulf war bores. In fact it is now a pleasure and a welcome change to walk into the pub in the morning and have Jimbo talk you through what he cooked in his wok for last night's suppei or tell you of the progress of his romance with the woman he met on the top of a No 9 bus. She sounds as stir-fried as his suppers. I once thought he had the makings of a cab driver but he is too interesting.
And now I must go and find some mug willing to read Norman's book to me so that I can review it for next week's Spectator. I don't know why I accepted that task. His brother-in-law could do it. He drives a mini-cab.
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