Low life
Drip feed
Jeffrey Bernard IWas sorry I couldn't address you last week but I wasn't feeling very well. My man who dealt with my chest implied that I might have lung cancer and the thought d t concentrate the mind as Doctor Johnson said, but dulled it and made the Sotoach to this wretched typewriter mething of an obstacle course. But last cM,°11daY, during a visit to the Brompton mething of an obstacle course. But last cM,°11daY, during a visit to the Brompton o"est Hospital, a specialist told me that I f nothing 'sinister'. I drew a great breath °I i relief which made me cough for five minutes. Now this specialist struck me as °elog something of a shrewd nut. He guess- ed that I had the odd cigarette and cocktail ad howYou can tell that looking!at a,bronz- Greek god across a desk in a consulting r0041, God only knows. What did fascinate The was the sight of my heart on the X-ray screen, It's there all right and it looks a lot ,°Igger than it feels. Furthermore, it is not 0roken as I'd thought it was in an emo- to°,11a1 accident I had in 1972 when Juliet siek me for the last time, 'You make me
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But what a bloody miracle this body is. If ;you fed into a cow or a horse what some of pus consume in one day, what on earth would happen? I'd very much like to wake up one morning with a cow of the Friesian variety and walk her down to Soho to the Coach and Horses, stopping on the way to buy 20 Players, ply her with vodkas until closing time, whip her off to an Indian restaurant, take her up to the Colony Room Club till 5.30 and then take her to the Yorkminster, Swiss Tavern, Three Greyhounds, get beaten up by Chinese waiters at midnight, have a row with a taxi driver, set the bed on fire, put it out with tears and then wake up on the floor. Could you then milk the said cow? I doubt it.
During one of my annual visits to the great Fred Winter's yard I said to him, `Good God, Fred, your horses look magnificent. Beautifully fit.' Of course they do, you twit,' he said. 'They don't sit up all night drinking gin and tonic and play- ing cards.' Anyway, although the past four months have been a bore and then a fright
• for me, I shall never be converted to jogging, wheat germ, deep-breathing exercises, free- range women or press-ups. It's put-downs and not press-ups that keep a man on his toes. But, as I say, this body never ceases to amaze me. It's very rebellious. It won't lie down. Now that the right lung is mere scar tissue it comes up with another card. The legs and feet are aching and it's got to be circulatory problems. The eyes are deteriorating all the time and what is in good nick doesn't get put to the test as often as it did in the old days or would wish to now. And one of the problems of losing weight is that you get a bony arse and the only thing I can sit on in comfort is a bar stool.
But the crunch is, I suppose, the brain. It's never had more than two or three tracks but they are now in need of repair and like British Rail I shall devote future Sundays to repairing them with Perrier water, the Ox- ford Dictionary, sackcloth and ashes. The old nonsense about dying brain cells isn't nonsense. I'm starting a book (1 shall bore you with excerpts in the near future) and the difficulty is not being able to remember anything before last Tuesday except for the odd bet, lady, fight and unpaid bill. The fact that my hands tremble indicates no more than a sensitive nature but the fact that my head trembles too has initiated my making another appointment at St Stephen's.
Talking of St Stephen's I must mention the Registrar, Dr McNab, who nursed me through my pneumonic and pleuristic days. I have always held that 99 per cent of the medical profession were, and arc, idiots. The playing God with the white coat and talking to you with the sing-song voice as though you were a I2-year-old half wit. But this man, like the specialist at the Brompton Chest pad, has restored faith. Not often is.it that you meet a man you can immediately trust. Very few spring to mind. I can now add Doctors McNab and Collins to the list comprising the first Duke of
Wellington, Mr Micawber, Rocky Gra- ziano, Fred Winter, my brothers, my ex- wife Ashley and the breakfast television weather forecaster on BBC. I used to think that you could go into the jungle with my old doctor in Suffolk but he died of drink having told me for five years to abstain. For further medical reports read next week.
Yesterday I met a fantastic-looking young woman who looks like a gem but with luck might not be as hard as one. What's extraordinary is that she's a qualified nurse. This is what I've been seek- ing for years. A beautiful nurse. Matrons I've had basinfuls of but with luck — she loves me, she loves me not — I could end up with my own private drip feed.
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