Low life
New leaves
Jeffrey Bernard
One of the most common phrases in country usage is the frequently uttered, 'You must come and have a drink with us ode evening this week.' It is usually, unfortunately, as purely rhetorical as the meaningless enquiry, 'How, are you?' Evening drinks or miniature 'cocktail' parties in the country are very sad affairs indeed. At most of them you'd die of thirst if you didn't take matters into your own hands and help yourself. Even so the veneer of decorum that contrasts so strangely with the malicious gossip that runs concurrently with the tippling forces the average consumer of alcohol to a pub after the polite and disgustingly sober `Goodnights' have been murmured on those ghastly coach-lamp-lit doorsteps. That is, of course, as I say, if you do actually get a genuine invitation.
But then, as I go on discovering daily, country folk are very strange about drinking. In spite of the fact that most pubs are disinclined to close at the appointed hours — I have been made welcome at 1 a.m. and 4 p.m. — drinking in my part of the world is so domestic an occupation as to be almost secretive. That's not to say there's a lack of dedication on the part of Berkshire tipplers, it's just that they prefer not to be seen to drink and they prefer to do it at home. Not an uncomfortable situation when you consider that, with the exception of myself and a few agricultural workers, every man's castle around here happens to be his home.
Take the strange case of one of my neighbours who owns a sizeable chunk of the Royal County. In spite of the fact that his equally rich wife won't allow anyone in her kitchen and has, in fact, a deep loathing of the idea of resident servants, she had to give second best when he put his foot down and insisted they have a butler. 'But what on earth do we need a butler for, darling?' she asked. 'Come along old girl,' he's reported to have said, 'I've got to 'have someone to open the tonics, haven't I?'
But what I want you to know is that I'm not writing in my usually preoccupied way about alcohol. No, it's now become, in my fourth week on the wagon, a positive obsession. Can you imagine the rare horror of actually being allergic to sobriety? Well, I am. I've been through this business before on a few occasions and 1 recognise the symptoms well. At the moment, my face is covered with red weals, bumps and blotches that are actually raised. My hands are swollen, hot and itchy in a way that's reminiscent of prickly heat. If Hogarth or Rowlandson could see me now they'd very likely be sick.
Well, why not go to a doctor? I'll tell you why, and God knows I've been on about doctors enough before. There's a panel Qtf three near here. One of them is competent and there is therefore a permanent queue° ,. a hundred waiting to see him. Another is uw man who sent a stable lad with a broken art.° home telling him there was nothing wrcing with him. The very next day he dismissed a .horsey girl with a doubly fractured kill cap, the result of a kick, telling her that a!, she had was a bruise. The third doctor IS. never in and I'm told he's always on II rounds. Rounds of what, I wonder. When first moved here I did ask a resident of loll standing, 'Which doctor should I see?' afl got the cynical reply, 'Witch doctor indeed.t Anyway, I'm here to advise you epos, the turning over of new leaves — an act I recently reported to you and one I pondei ,. all through my now insomniac nights. Ott' suffering the ill effects of abstinence aside' rural inefficiency manifests itself by PI having to order insulin days in advance. 0 needing it. I have now taken the precauton of making friends with several oxen so as t° get my own. There is, thou_kh, one way round all this trouble. They'll do anything for a racehorse in this part of the world. Anything brow°' bay or chesnut on four legs round here that so much as sneezes, belches, breaks wind blinks and they're round in a flash. Mititu you, it wouldn't do to convey the wr011,gA symptoms like skittishness or zest. YOU " get gelded.
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