Low life
Fried cod and tears
Jeffrey Bernard
Now that I have stopped hating and knocking Christmas, I got the one I deserved this time. A couple of years ago, I decided to ride with the punches, so to speak, and enjoy the give and take, the tra- ditional food and anything and everything with a hang-over from Charles Dickens. Even the panic of last-minute shopping which is almost damn-nigh impossible from a wheelchair.
In the event, I spent the day alone, chewed on a bit of Marks & Spencer fried cod, stared at my redundant mistletoe — it wasn't my idea to put it up, just sarcastic optimism on my behalf from an old flame — and shed a few tears watching a produc- tion of La Boheme on television. I really must stop weeping when I watch shows and films. I despise a certain sort of sentiment in myself and my eyes filled with tears even at the end of a fairly silly film I saw, Pretty Woman, just because there was a happy ending. I find the fringes of tragedy quite acceptable, but the sight of two people walking into the sunset almost chokes me. (Perhaps I should come off the wagon.) And speaking of the wagon, and all things to do with drinking and not drinking, I am still extremely irritated with whoever it was at the Sunday Telegraph who arranged the presentation of a piece I wrote about my boozing in the Christmas Eve issue. They called it 'Dutch courage, Scotch mist'. Not a particularly good title but what really got to me were the very silly headings concocted by who I take to be a sub-editor. One of them said that I was the world's most notorious drunk, which is quite simply a load of bollocks, and anoth- er one said that drink has ruined my life. More balls. If that were the case, I would hardly have written the piece stone-cold sober in a warm and moderately comfort- able flat.
In a way, I was not particularly surprised because, although the piece was originally commissioned by Charles Moore, it was produced under the direction of the Sun- day Telegraph's new editor, Dominic Law- son, who wrote, 'Jeffrey Bernard has had his leg cut off' the week that it was ampu- tated at the Middlesex Hospital. I expect exaggerations and downright lies from a couple of the tabloids but not from what is called a quality newspaper like the Sunday Telegraph.
In my Christmas stocking I was given a copy of Gower: The Autobiography. He recounts the way in which he was treated by the press and the downright lies, and the gall it must have taken to write and print them is enough to make your hair stand on end. It would have been unfair to any man but from the little I know of David Gower plus a couple of brief meetings with him in the Groucho Club he is very much all right and a good man. I am not, of course, saying that I am very much all right or a good man, but I don't think I can be described as the most notorious drunk in Britain.
There is also a little heading in my piece quoting me as saying that I once had the thrill of nearly killing a man during a pyschotherapy session. That is absolutely true. It is a form of therapy that I can strongly recommend although it needs someone to be around to pull you off your intended victim. The patients who definite- ly benefited from the owning up that went on in these group therapy sessions were the female patients who came over from anoth- er ward for our meetings.
I remember one of them, a very respectable middle-aged and middle-class twin-set-wearing type lady, who admitted that she was more or less anyone's for the price of a drink, and she could be had in the churchyard nearest to her local. There was also a very attractive nursing sister who had been in charge of a casualty depart- ment in a London hospital who was in the habit of drinking fairly heavily on duty who said that she first realised she was an alco- holic when she sprayed vaginal deodorant on to the face of a man suffering from eczema. I somehow hear his screams echo- ing down the corridors of the now crumbling St Bernard's hospital. Happy days.
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