Letters
Opiates and the people
Sir: What a sheltered life, my noticeably greying but surely still quite young friend Geoffrey Wheatcroft (Letters, 22 Decem- ber) seems to lead, 'twixt Garrick and Beefsteak Clubs with only occasional sor- ties to Tuscany, Jo'burg or the odd freebie trip down the road in this canton to some expensive expense-account vieux-chapeau, bourgeois-epatant, nouvelle cuisine shrine! Why, he doesn't so much as bother to at- tend either the rehearsals or performances of Covent Garden operas, he is in such a hurry to review with calumniatory philisti- nism in the glossies! As for the deaths of alcoholic acquaintances I tend to regard them as merely my own merciful release from the boredom of their company, so I may overlook their possible actuarial pre- maturity. But I never cease to brood over the loss, by more than half-a-dozen grie- ving friends, of children full of beauty and promise, who were seduced into making their last, bad trip before their life's jour- ney had yet rightly begun. The fact that one of the dearest of my many nieces ex- ■ ceptionally succeeded in cold-turkeying herself off 'smack' in time to avoid admis- sion overdosed to a hospital mortuary does not prevent me from being in this grave matter a firm supporter of Waugh and Welch against Wheatcroft's dogmatic libe- ral insistence on giving the devil rather more than his due.
The properly and to me now convinc- ingly penitent Taki had in the same issue some impressive words of warning for your former literary editor and his supporters. I had been hoping that, on early release after good conduct remissions, he might give Wheatcroft some further brisk les- sons, both polemical and physical, in his private Kensington gymnasium. I am still most reluctant to believe that there will not be found before too long, at some more senior level of the Home Office than has yet been heard from, cool, calm delibera- tors capable of seeing that, in a capital where such pernicious nonsense as Wheat- croft's can be freely peddled alongside the drugs, the continued residence of a genui- nely repentant Taki, fit enough for nightly Salvation Army duty at Annabel's and for weekly hot-gospelling at Speaker's Corner and in these pages, could be counted dis- tinctly desirable. In any event, is it not high time that deportation orders, at present apparently mandatorily associated with convictions for specified offences, be put on a suspended sentence basis? That would at least give a passionately anglophile citi- zen of the European Community like Taki a single last chance to 'stay and sin no more.'
Alastair Forbes
1837 Château d'Oex, Switzerland
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