Low life
All my
units gone
Jeffrey Bernard
Ihave not had a drink for three weeks now, which to many of you probably sounds to be a mere jiffy, but it is long enough to have some unpleasant withdraw- al symptoms like itching and insomnia. Not even my sleeping pills work and my scratching the ever-present itching has caused scabs on the backs of my hands which I have tried, more or less, to tear apart. And most irritating of all is that I have developed a phantom itch in my miss- ing leg and foot.
I'm sick of being in hospital every two or three months and, more amazing still, I am sick of drinking. Oh, that I could be so for ever. If God allows us just a certain amount of booze, I have had my share and also I have had my share of listening to drunks waffling in pubs. Whenever I have been on the wagon, and 20 years ago I lasted for two and a half years, I get disgustingly puri- tanical and intolerant of drunks and I become a real poacher turned gamekeeper, which is very unattractive just as nearly all forms of disapproval are. You might think that Peter O'Toole gave up drinking years ago for medical reasons, but he once told me that he woke up one morning and sim- ply felt sick of the whole business. If I can last a bit longer, I will have nobody to talk to which is the penalty you pay for staying out of hospital or even the madhouse.
It tempts me to take advantage of the Council's offer to move to the seaside. They are hoping to persuade people to give up their flats to make room for urgent cases of homelessness, and to offer you alternative accommodation by the sea along the south coast almost anywhere between Land's End and Norfolk. It is a nice idea in theory, but who the hell would I know living on the coast and who on earth would travel that distance to see me?
What appeals to me most of all about the idea of moving to the coast would be to take up a new identity. I could move into a house atop a cliff taking with me just a sea- chest and Mr Cobb, my plastic parrot, say my leg had been bitten off by a white shark in the South China Sea, and call myself 'the Captain' and maybe go so far as to say that I am descended from Peter Grimes, Cap- tain Ahab or R.L. Stevenson's Captain Flint. It is secrecy that I now crave and not paragraphs in the Standard's Londoner's Diary telling all and sundry what a piss-pot I am. It would serve to fulfil a long-time ambition to be an eccentric. Unfortunately, like being a practical joker, being an eccen- tric requires a fair amount of money but the Council in this case would pay for all the trappings apart from a black eye-patch and an ancient telescope for the other eye. There would be no room for a woman in this scenario like Emma Hamilton, a gross- ly fat alcoholic who somehow contrived to run up a bill in about 1810 for wine and spirits when they must have been almost nothing to buy, or the French Lieutenant's woman, alias Meryl Streep who strikes me as being a bit of a cold fish. I suppose that in no time at all, if I adopted the R.L. Stevenson pose, the neighbours would serve me with the black spot.
The reality of living by the seaside I have only experienced once when my grandpar- ents lived in a place called Norman's Bay near Hastings and named presumably because of the battle and not the idiot who owns the Coach and Horses. I was about ten at the time and used to play on the beach with a girl called Bella who killed an innocent sandpiper one day and I was so appalled that I hit her over the head with a rock. It must have nearly killed her but it gave me enormous pleasure and it made a delightful sound. I wonder what happened to all that violence which attracted me so much in those days. When I went home from that little holiday I burn my mother's summer house down. I was full of get up and go in those days.
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