Low life
Cucumber sandwiches . . .
Jeffrey Bernard
It is so awful here that I sometimes think dying will be like going on holiday. The dry-cleaners keep stealing my shirts, the local café can't scramble eggs, every taxi I get is driven by an avaricious moron, the bar staff drown my vodka with soda, I can't see to read any more and Norman has lost his marbles in anticipation of the party to launch his ghosted autobiography on 7 March. He is even ordering pizza for his guests, which is another nightmare as far as I am concerned.
The other party which I am becoming anxious about is the one I am giving for my daughter, Isabel, on 4 March for her 21st birthday. I would like to make it a cucum- ber sandwich affair with a cake with icing and 21 candles but I suppose there is little hope of that. She came into the pub recent- ly and asked for a Southern Comfort and lemonade. Depressing that. There can be little hope for a girl who orders a drink like that beyond becoming either a hairdresser in Acton or a sub on the Sun. What is going to be awkward is making sure that she herself gets to come to her own sur- prise party. It will be like trying to drag somebody on to This is Your Life.
Speaking of which I have had a good response from the rather bizarre idea for a television show I wrote about in the Sunday Mirror last week, This is Your Wife. It could either be very funny or it could lead to somebody (the ex-husband) breaking down altogether. I would be willing to do it but I would do so with not a little trepidation. To hear those voices from, the past — two in my case since I hadn't really learned how to behave badly when I was first married — could make one writhe with discomfort: 'On a certain night in August 1970 he came home from Newbury races drunk and pen- niless and then contrived to set fire to the house having telephoned my mother to tell her that she was an ugly old bitch.' But there are all sorts of different recrimina- tions that could out. I wonder if I may be the only man who has ever had his sobriety cited as grounds for divorce. In 1972, after a long spell on the wagon, I was divorced and my wife, Isabel's mother, complained that when I wasn't drinking I was moody, sullen, irritable and uncommunicative. Well, of course. Why else should I drink?
On the morning after I wrote about the idea my mini-cab driver told me that 15 years ago he booked into a hotel in Sri Lanka with someone. After a couple of days his wife telephoned from England to ask him how he was getting on. Reception answered the phone and the man said, 'Oh, you can't speak to them now. Mr and Mrs White have just gone out for the day.' The driver told me that cost him his house, wife and two children and that he had been pay- ing through the nose for the episode ever since. I am afraid that it serves him right. You don't face fast bowlers without wear- ing pads. But perhaps this idea for a pro- gramme might be a little too near the knuckle. I saw a man break down once in tears on television while talking about his divorce and it was horribly moving and sad. Recriminations is a lousy game.
And now I shall pour a drink to banish such morbid thoughts and try to work out, like a good father should, just how many cucumber sandwiches, scones, jam and clotted cream and what sort of cake to give the birthday girl. Perhaps the craving for tea and cucumber sandwiches heralds a second childhood.
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