Low life
On the wagon
Jeffrey Bernard
The absence of last week's column was due to the fact that I had another attack of pancreatitis which I was told is now a chronic condition and one from which there is no longer any escape. I had even been on the wagon for a week before, and non-stop nausea is very nearly as bad as pain.
Anyway, the one thing that can be said about what is tantamount to being an hon- orary patient of the Middlesex hospital is that it keeps me firmly in touch with reali- ty, which I like. The days of dreaming are over. Taking up my usual position in the smoking area of the landing, I fell into con- versation one morning with a disconcert- ing-looking Indian gentleman in his 60s. I say disconcerting because, his cafe au lait colour apart, he was an absolute ringer for James Joyce. So, sitting there feeling dejected and a little sorry for myself, I asked him what was wrong with him, as patients will ask each other when they meet. He told me that he had cancer of the pancreas and then he added 'This morning they told me that I have six months to live.' It seems that his cancer is inoperable and even Mr Russell, the surgeon who is ace with the pancreas, can do nothing. After a While, I asked him did he feel bitter about it and, although he spoke excellent English, he said he didn't understand the word 'bit- ter', but he answered the question later by repeatedly saying, 'Why me? Why me?' It occured to me, not for the first time, how large a part good and bad luck play in health and medicine. (I wonder how I should be now if I had not had such an obsessive presentiment about having one or both legs amputated as long as three years ago. Someone in Antony and Cleopa- tra says, 'He who is was wished until he were'.) But apart from James Joyce, as I began to think of him, another incident that gave me food for thought was when I was being wheeled out to the smokers' landing, I passed a side ward — a single room — and I said to the nurse pushing me, 'Who's the lucky sod with the room to himself?' The nurse said, 'He's not so lucky. He'll never come out of that room.'
After my release and a day at home, I was beginning to feel well again until I Watched Timewatch about the people involved in one of the last executions in this country. It made me feel physically sick- Albert Pierrepoint being dead, they filmed his assistant, a slightly self-righteous and very ordinary artisan who was only doing his job, wouldn't you know. At least one of the warders who kept the con- demned man company at the end had the good grace to have had nightmares for some time after, but details of the drop and the mechanics of hanging a man were quite chilling. It took a good two hours to regain a little of my composure only to be made sick again by accidentally switching over to The Generation Game and seeing the revolting Bruce Forsyth. To cap it all, I got a bill this morning for £84.50 to renew my television licence.
I keep looking back on that Timewatch episode and remembering that, when I worked in the cutting rooms at Ealing Stu- dios, we spent three days with Pierrepoint. Like his assistant, he too was just doing a job, but if he hadn't pulled himself up just short of saying, 'Somebody's got to do it', I think I would have hit him. After he retired he took a pub with the gruesome name of `Rest the Weary Traveller', and put up awful notices on the walls of the bar with jolly quips like 'No hanging about'. He con- tinually spoke about how brave the objects of his bread and butter were. Without admitting it openly, he implied that most people went to the gallows fortified by a glass of brandy. I bet they were doped up to the eyeballs, just as I have to be to watch the aforementioned idiot, Bruce Forsyth.
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