Low life
Puritan
Jeffrey Bernard
The puritanical streak is the deep-seated , spinal cord which runs through every 'ow-lifer. There's nothing like the pleasure of throwing stones in glass houses. Some- tunes it's an unconscious pleasure, but it's there. I'm aware of it myself. There's nothing bores me more than the gambler who indulges in endless post-mortems his the lousy cards he got dealt or how ills horse got boxed in on the rails, just as there's nothing fills me with a bigger sigh than to have to leave a pub and then come hin again because the drunk who's button- "'Died rne won't let go. But, worst of all, are junkies. They are completely at home With themselves. Like pussy cats curled up in front of the fire there's no contact to be 111,, ade. A stroke maybe, but little response. A possible purr. When I did my stint in the nut house (letters of complaint about my
irreverence to the mentally afflicted will be ignored) there was nothing quite so tedious as breakfast with a heroin addict, after- noon tea with a barbiturate addict ex- doctor, or late-night cocoa with a hippie main-liner.
This is why I can't stop contemplating the plight of Taki, whom I have enormous sympathy for, but at the same time I can't help thinking that all the trouble could have been so easily avoided. One of his problems is that he's never been in a pub more than half a dozen times. Eton wasn't a good start but there have been people who've survived it to become really suc- cessful things like Members of Parliament, con men, and Foreign Office moles. The desire to succeed socially prevented people like Taki from embracing the bottom rung of the ladder and it's the bottom rung that's the best one because although it's the furthest from the top the landing is softest when you fall. If Lord Lucan had had my modest bohemian background he'd be happily playing spoof for a quid in the French pub tonight. If Taki had had that same background he'd be happily sniffing — with a little crying — that some worth- less bird had left him.
What I'm getting at again, for the umpteenth time, is just what do they mean when they say, 'Oh, but just look at all the advantages he's had.'? My advantage is that I've never been able to afford a stronger drug than alcohol, flattery or a column which is beginning to drive me mad. But what intrigues me — and I think I know the answer — is just what makes someone take a drug other than alcohol for the first time. The very idea of it terrifies me. Is it curiosity, bravado, a desire to be macho, boredom or what?
I think it may be boredom and the terminus of that train of thought leads me to believe that my haunts, friends and acquaintances might equal those of Taki's. There are all sorts of varieties of quality. I can feel the quality of Annabel's but do they know the width of mine? It's like having to wear a tie to go into those places. It's not just to keep scruffs out, it's symbolic of something that's got nothing to do with money or even class but something to do with the fact that these people have got to cling desperately to each other. They've got nothing else to hold. The values are different. In the Coach and Horses you get your shout, in Annabel's you simply shout. Yes, I have been there. The difference between backgammon and crib is simply a matter of taste. In Holly- wood if you're not rich and famous you're dead. In Soho the chances are that if you're not rich and famous someone will ask you what you'd like to drink. I don't romanti- cise. I've seen most of the colours of the spectrum, even the grey of the USSR, and people, my dear — as someone in Beatrix Potter once said — simply don't know When they're well off.
So who's well off? Answers on a post- card, please, in the form of a sonnet without the mention of the word money. Winners will receive a free night in the Coach and Horses followed by a guided tour of Lord Lucan's London, meet Berkeley Square tube station 1 a.m.
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