Low life
Summer break
Jeffrey Bernard
am having my summer break here at the Peacock Inn where I was a regular 20 years ago. In fact I am having two summer breaks since I fell down the stairs leading to my room last Saturday and fractured my left humerus in two places. (When I get back to London I might as well go to Gold- ers Green and wait.) Anyway, the crunch was agonising and the pain is still with me, and the pain-killing tablets I have been prescribed induce nausea.
This body has been under a sort of siege for the past five years and is continually being ambushed by pavements, Royal Mail vans — expert at the hit and run game front doorsteps and staircases. Even the bumpy drive to the West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds in the ambulance was an assault. So now I am helpless.
The landlord of the Peacock has been aces and he dresses me in the morning, undresses me at night and his wife cuts my food up when it isn't scrambled eggs or pasta, but I can't get into or out of a bath. I hope to God I can get some home help when I get back to Westminster. I couldn't even open a tin or a bottle at the moment.
Mercifully the weather so far has been marvellous and I have been sitting in the garden being fed drinks and listening to a variety of birdsong, but I must say that the nonstop cooing of doves is a little monotonous. ,- The country is not quite all roses. Before the fracture I went to see some old friends in Lavenham and it had been invaded by the Japanese. At least it is impossible to understand them, and far worse are the parties of English passing trade in the pubs. It is of no interest whatsoever to eavesdrop on them. There is nobody at home. When their awful children jump up and down on the flower beds and the boss, Tony Marsh, admonishes them the parents say, 'You don't like children, do you?' and he replies, `Yes, I have plenty of my own. It's their parents I don't like.'
I have rarely seen a woman work as hard as Lorna does to keep these people stoked up with food. The kitchen is hot all right but she doesn't get out of it much. Running a pub must be hell sometimes. They do attract bores. You notice that even more when stone-cold sober with a swollen, thumping arm in a sling. But this is as good today as the intended summer break in Antibes. The Peacock Inn is highly recom- mended.
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