Low life
Drink up
Jeffrey Bernard
Forget the incredible whale and the beauti' ful peregrine falcon for a minute and join with me in reflecting on the plight of Yet another endangered species very likelY re; become extinct in the near future. I refer, 01 course, to the lounge lizard. The Chancel' lor's determination to stamp out this affectionate but unpredictable animal, as syrohnlic of the past magnificence of Great Britain as the lions at the foot of Nelson's colunlo, can only be regarded with stunned horror. A spokesman for the Brewers' Society spoke for many of us and hit the nail on the head when he said: 'There will be sour faces in the pubs tonight.' Well, there's aivvaYsf been a sour face in the pub, usually that ° the landlord's wife, but one gets his drift. On the evening of Budget day I toured the pubs of Soho and found the same reaction to the Budget almost everywhere. One ashen-faced official of the Save the LOU Lizard Fund told me: 'Up till now most en these animals have been able to survive 2: £25 a day. Now, the sky's going to be limit.' So, what to do? Personally I intend to ell! back on inessential luxury goods such ri; food and clothing. There are dangers though. One lizard of my acquaintance went broke in New York once and lived for two weeks on the olives and peanuts he gleaned from cocktail parties. He was taken to the Roosevelt Hospital suffering, not from malnutrition oddly enough, but from Fxhaustion. Apparently it was all the standing around on his feet all day that finally knackered him. ,.,, Mind you, I was delighted to hear that the Royals won't go skim and that the Prince of Wales will be getting his fair share. While Others had been rejoicing at his forthcoming marriage, I felt quite gloomy on his behalf, thinking that on the morning of 30 July he would hear, for the first time in his life, the sound of burnt toast being scraped. At least they'll have a maid. My own dear maid has Just been served with her redundancy notice. Reluctantly I have just sent her a note explaining that, in the present and future economic climate, one ironed shirt does not equal six Mediterranean prawns at 44.20 in Wheelers. But she's bound to find another position. So many people are giving U p drinking nowadays following the example of our own dear editor. Across the road from us in Doughty Street and in the pub used rather sparingly by the staff of this lournal, the Duke of York, Dave the guvnor' was visibly trembling after the Budget, foolishly thinking that he might never see another human being. But lizards, I reassured him, are loyal and faithful beasts. What seemed to be a point for universal discussion in the pubs that night was the fact that Sir Geoffrey taxed the wrong things. WhY not bread? Why leave water alone? What about that disgusting substance `instant' coffee? But there are aspects of the budget I do approve of. The tax on cigarettes has enabled me to give up smoking three times this week, and I wasn't all that sorry when I read in the Daily Mirror that the publicans' leader had said that, 'Sir Geoffrey had hammered another i nail n the coffin of the English country 1311h.' Much as I sympathise with friends in the sticks, the country pub has been dead for some time. How can any place that attaches more importance to a display of eoPper bed-warming pans and horse brasses than it does to its lizards possibly deserve to survive? Nowhere is it more obvious than in a. country pub that Auberon Waugh was right When he said that the trouble with the thgli sh was that they didn't drink enough.
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