Low life
Writer's block
Jeffrey Bernard
This week has been rotten so far and it is only Tuesday today from where I am sitting. Yesterday, I saw Anthony Burgess in Old Compton Street, called out to him, but he pressed on. I found that strangely depressing and then bumped into Jay Landesman who didn't press on and that was depressing too. And, at the moment, it is raining, probably will for ever, and I am due to picnic at the Oval tomorrow, go to Cherbourg the day after and finally picnic again at Ascot for the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes.
I am also living with two cats, one of which, called Alice, is really rather awful. Can you imagine a cat being so fat that you can actually hear it walk across a carpet? Also, the said cat does not sit on the mat. It sleeps on my temporary litter. Alice's friend and enemy, Stanley, is out all night and sleeps in the kitchen all day which is just what you expect of a self-respecting tom. But I don't like Alice and I don't want whatever lives in her tabby fur coat in my bed. She doesn't like me either and thinks that I have evicted her holiday-making owners from their house. Anyway, that's what it has come down to. Cat-sitting in return for a bed, and being snubbed by Anthony Burgess. I felt so gloomy that I went to the Groucho Club and complained at them for not doing cucumber sand- wiches on a summer's afternoon.
They are so good to me there that I feel rotten about that now. Cucumbers are for Pimms. Another disturbing thing, speaking of the Groucho, is that strange women in there keep nodding to me and mouthing good afternoons. I don't know them. What on earth have I said or done or not done? To cap it all I was interviewed by a woman from Balance, the magazine of the British Diabetic Association. Why their readers should want to read about how I break the rules heaven alone knows but diabetics, I have noticed, don't half go on about it. Then a man from another magazine came into the pub to photograph me. This sort of thing must be done in private in future if there is any future. It upsets thespian friends so much to see anybody else get paid some attention let alone get served in the Coach and Horses.
Thank God for the fact that so few of Norman's customers are members of the Groucho. Should that last bolthole become a sort of Milton Keynes for the insane I should have to go and live abroad. I shall have to go and live somewhere in ten days' time anyway. Alice and Stanley's owners return. If any reader needs a cat-sitter who has given up smoking in bed then please let me know. I will sit for dogs but will not walk them or guide them through the revolving doors of the Groucho Club. Yes, it's wet and cold and I suppose if I had been walking along Old Compton Street a hundred-odd years ago Charles Dickens would have snubbed me. Two years ago, Burgess once spent an afternoon in the Colony Room Club telling me the meaning of life. The trouble is I have forgotten what he said which is why I tried to buttonhole him yesterday.
Jay Landesman knows the meaning of life but unfortunately, being American, he can't speak English. I was sent his auto- biography recently to review, but how can you give a bad review to an old friend and ex-publisher? Tricky one, that. I suppose you can lie or write it under a pseudonym. Perhaps the thing would be to say to Jay, `You should have written it yourself. Who needs ghosts?' The truth is I am envious of all the publicity he has had. Also the fact that he has a house and is married to a very clever woman. I have had both of those luxuries but am now about to move into a single tent in the camping department of Lillywhites.
It was a wise man — probably Anthony Burgess — who once said that it never rains but it pours and looking out of the window I see that it is doing just that. A taxi to Soho seems to be in order and I shall leave a tin opener for Alice to work it out for herself.
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