Low life
A slap in the belly
Jeffrey Bernard
Richards, the fresh and wet fishmon- ger in Brewer Street, was forced to close down last week and it is a minor tragedy. A preservation order should be slapped on all of old Soho before it becomes a vast strip club. And something should be done to curb the greed of Soho landlords. God knows what, though. The boss told me that he had looked at alternative premises further along the street but they were asking for a rent of £45,000 a year.
Of course, the public is mad too to support these clip joints. How anyone can prefer to stare at two tits rather than feast their eyes and then their stomachs on that display of the fruits of ocean is beyond me. Anyway, once you have seen two or three tits you have seen them all. I walked past the shop the day after they closed it and the staff were standing outside on the pave- ment looking extremely gloomy as a team of builders filleted the place. And why do the people who own these buildings sell out to property spivs? The man who owns that good bar P.J. Clarke's in New York has reputedly turned down millions of dollars for that prime site.
But Soho is falling apart and so are a few of its denizens. The old faces are being replaced by some pretty awful new ones. Above Richards there used to be the first tailor I ever went to, Manny Goldshaker, who confessed to me that he was a secret ham and bacon eater. Opposite there was a very nice prostitute who would lean out of
her window when she wasn't working and her blond hair cascaded over the window- sill. She was murdered and they never caught the man. He probably frequents the awful peep show that is now beneath her old flat. It is all very depressing.
On top of that, my niece has just telephoned to tell me that her sister has just been taken to hospital where they have diagnosed diabetes. It is rotten for her particularly since she is a young dancer and not an old layabout. At least she is sensible and organised and will not forget to take her insulin, and a glance at the wreckage I live in will keep her on the straight and narrow. What a nasty, bloody little organ the pancreas is. You would think that giving yourself a couple of jabs a day would soon become a habit.
Diabetes is incurable but they have just found a way in which to electrocute sperm. It rather reminds me of my own research work in the chemistry lab when I was 12 years old. I discovered that you could kill goldfish by dropping some potassium per- manganate in their bowls. It looked like pink gin with the bitters left in. But I wonder if diabetes runs in our family. Neither of my parents had it but they died young. I gather that longevity is hereditary and I wonder if the opposite is true. I shall be 58 next week and my father was 58 when he died. Like most gamblers I am horribly superstitious. I ponder these things staring out of the window and looking down at Maida Vale. I should have been looking out of the window next week and seeing New Zea- land but that trip I was so looking forward to has been cancelled. The book I was to have helped launch has run into legal difficulties. And they were going to fly me on to Sydney. So that is more fish I won't see. Richards in Brewer Street has gone but if the Aussies ever close down Doyle '5 in Sydney it will be a calamity.
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