Low life
Don't take me away
Jeffrey Bernard
Iam getting so weak and feeble that someone came up with the horrific idea last week that I should move into a nursing home. If there was such a thing as a civilised nursing home in England inhabited by cigarette smokers — I wonder who the hell would pay for it. You can imagine how politically correct such places must be today. They are probably run by the descendants of people who worked as guards at Auschwitz.
I have mentioned the idea to a couple of people, one of them an old hand at nurs- ing, a retired sister, whose only bit of advice sounded quite sensible to me: 'If you go and look at one, don't look at the wallpaper or the ghastly carpets, look at the menu.' A nursing home is literally the last place I would go to and anyway it wouldn't be very different from here except that in my flat I am surrounded by my pos- sessions whereas in a nursing home, although theoretically there would be as much freedom of movement, what the hell do you go back to?
On the few occasions I go out nowadays for a meal, I sit there munching away dreading the return to my sofa and view out of the window which is either a grey sky or a blue one. I also wonder how they would like me in a nursing home where they may be used to the odd ten-second tantrum, but how would they put up with the real thing? I only have the reputation with some of the staff at the Middlesex Hospital for being their most difficult patient because I am supposed to be so rude and aggressive when all I do is ques- tion various procedures and the attitude of nurses and doctors. So God knows how that would go down in a nursing home where I would have to shout into ear trum- pets all day long, or shake and kick people to get their attention.
But in some ways the idea of reverting to being a baby has its appealing aspects. First and foremost, you, that is to say I, would have to do nothing whatsoever. The only thing people really expect from babies is for them to cry a lot and fart from time to time. I have had 65 years_ of practice at both. What I couldn't bear would be to be surrounded by a lot of nurses of the old school who spend their time ticking one off. Mind you, it is only nurses of the old school who have much of a clue as to what they are doing. Although, as I say, it is an horrific idea, I have to admit I can't stop thinking about it and imagining it. The con- versations in the dayroom with old ladies suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's could not possibly be more incoherent that ten minutes in the Coach and Horses.
I looked in there the other day for the first time in an age on my way opposite to treat myself to a very much missed Chinese meal. Christine is in Hong Kong clearing up her businesses there and the Ming seems to have gone mad in her absence. For some rice, a slice of chicken, some mixed vegetables and a couple of dumplings I was charged £20. Knowing and cooking Chinese food fairly well, that meal must have cost about £2 to produce. The main attraction about the Ming now is that the staff are sycophantic which is a nice change from the usual Chinese service which consists normally of being screamed at or attacked with baseball bats.
There are plenty of Chinese restaurants in Gerard Street and Lisle Street that I can go to with a friend but going alone in a wheelchair takes as much nerve as bungy jumping from the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The closing down of the Indone- sian Rasa Sayang in Frith Street is one of the saddest things to have happened to Soho for months. We had a Spectator lunch there not long ago and everybody from Vicki Woods to Ned Sherrin enjoyed it tremendously. I found it so irresistible that I nearly had to call an ambulance or taxi to the dialysis unit at the hospital. I shall remember such lovely occasions when I lie sobbing in a nursing home.
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