Low life
Wrong track
Jeffrey Bernard
This was in the Sporting Life of all Papers last Friday: 'Three hundred Youngsters commit suicide every year Many of them out of shame because they are 1143t getting any sexual experiences, the Samaritans reported yesterday.' It made me Wonder if the Samaritans have any figures for the amount of middle-aged people who a, re contemplating suicide out of shame because they are having too many sexual ex- periences with the wrong people. It also ni.ade me wonder just who the hell are the right people. As for the aforementioned Youngsters I didn't give them much thought although it must be a sad business for their friends and relatives. After all, although I can remember long and fairly painful bouts of celibacy at around the age of 18, when girls only fancied you if you were about 40, like being broke it's no reason — or a very bad one — for killing yourself. Admittedly I did have a flash of melancholy at Cheltenham on Gold Cup day when a girl in one of the bars told me that she could just about fancy me if 1 was 20 years younger but it passed with the arrival of the next round. Yes, I thought 20 years a bit cruel but then it's always some consolation, if you need it, to look at the young twerps who are 20 years and more younger under whom these girls bestow their favours. And is it in fact a favour?
Anyway, at the time of reading that small but sad news item, I was travelling on the Orient Express to Cheltenham sipping champagne, and that's not a situation con- ducive to considering suicide or the young or both. The Pullman car I was travelling in, 'Cygnus', had been part of Churchill's funeral train in 1965. What a way to go. The free champagne was rather good but how come it's called free when the day return comes to £140? They served canapes on the way down and a three-course dinner on the way back the main course of which was cold on a very cold day. Steak and kidney pudding would have been more in order but who can complain when the ticket is a kind and generous present?
By Paddington
my train of thought had me contemplating those 300 suicidal youngsters again and wondering just how many of them would complain if they did have those sexual experiences they were ashamed of missing. Were they like the dashing hack on this journal whose idea of foreplay is 20 minutes begging? And for how long would they have had to postpone their suicides to discover that we're most of us rather it's to each other? Of course, t's no good trying to tell them that a dog can be disappointed in 'his day' and it would be completely pointless to try to explain to them the enormous sense of relief I felt last week when I decided to close down the Great Portland Street Academy for Young Women and cancel our Summer School. The trouble is that the 300 who ride annual- ly into the valley of shame just don't know what they're missing and what you're miss- ing isn't always altogether a good thing. Reading yet another boring piece about the menopause, this time in last Sunday's Observer, I looked at the four photographs of women supposedly suffering or about to suffer that state and to think that they could have male teenagers reaching for the barbiturates and gas taps was and is truly depressing. There are more career-minded, fitness-freaked, liberal ladies like Jane Fon- da in Fleet Street than you can shake a stick at. Every trattoria in London has a Joan Collins in it. I cringe to think that's what I wanted when I was what the Samaritans call a 'youngster'. What I fear I have missed is a sexual ex- perience with the manageress of my local launderette. She's as solid as the figurehead of a tea clipper. She has a nicotine stain which runs from her upper lip to the bridge of her nose from the permanent fag stuck in her foul mouth. She coughs so you can hear her coming. She doesn't bother with make- up like Joan Collins. She's gone to seed completely and finds it cosy. She'd like to shoot those who don't 'fit in'. She's bad tempered, she sulks and she's lazy, She sometimes mentions her husband and her lip curls at the thought of him. She even sneers at my best shirts, shakes her head and taps her foot at my approach. In short, she is devoid of any sort of nonsense. She could make lemmings turn back. At the sight of her, 300 suicidally inclined youngsters would split the heavens with a rendering of 'Jerusalem'. She may be the woman I've been looking for for years and all the time I thought it was Veronica Lake, Anne Sheridan and Ava Gardner.
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