Low life
Language
Jeffrey Bernard
Last Saturday I went to Newbury for the races and there was a nice little to do on the train with a ticket inspector. I'd bough; a race train 'special' ticket but jump aboard an Inter-City when I heard it Was „ going to make a hitherto unscheduled stop at Newbury Racecourse itself. Just before we arrived, this extraordinary ticket collees for came into my carriage to do .11,1 business. He was real Waffen SS matenaiii About 6ft bins, severe looking with a pent moustache and wearing an impeccably pressed Germanic BR uniform, I could s,ee he wasn't one to take prisoners. I was slt, ting in a first class compartment and had tc give him the excess fare. Fair enough. But the bastard made me pay the entire Ofe again because he said special race tram tickets couldn't be transferred to other .5 trains. This peeved me somewhat as did officious manner. I remarked, with some `Somehow the mid-life crisis has passed me by.' Sarcasm, seeing how he relished the inci- (lent, 'I suppose you really enjoy your job.' hawing himself up to a good 6ft Tins he replied, `Yes sir, I do. And, furthermore, I was created and not born, sir.' I'd be extremely grateful to any reader who can tell me what on earth that might Possibly mean. At the time words failed me 1 except for the short one which always springs to mind. I barked it out and a `"'year-old boy in the corner of the com- partment busy taking down railway engine numbers turned scarlet and seemed on the
might of a fit. (However boring swearing 'Ight be I'm suspicious of people who are
s9heamish about it.) I was feeling very ir- ritated by now and was tempted to turn on the boy to tell him if he spent more time abusing himself and others then his spots would clear up in no time. Then at Reading we were joined by a man who was carrying !_chlpy of the Sun and who was covered in tattoos. By Newbury I was feeling sick. The idiot inspector who drew himself up to his ull height every time he opened his mouth, he boy a physical wreck at the mention of an obscene word and a tattooed Sun wor- S:111PPer. What were they trying to tell us? Not for the first time I reflected that Des-
, half Morris's Body Language is only the
1 of it. These gestures bear closer ex- amination. I often wonder about a girl who works on ,,,4 lieWSPaper I go to, whose every physical 'dh'ement and gesture is pure posture. You O ,robabiy f know the type. They sit on the .°01' a lot and, if they're wearing jeans, they neY wave their legs about. When they stand and talk their arms point and wave like so many Isadora Duncan contortions. They smoke cigarettes professionally. The smoke ' Inhaled very sharply and the teeth are bared. Then the head turns to give you a 413rofile and the smoke is exhaled slowly and biomes and the grey jet stream what a beautiful blue cloud of smoke. that, hat are they trying to tell us? Well, all aria?, like compulsive face-pulling, is simply laisIgn of pure, stark terror. Such women rnscl,, have their disgusting equivalent of the :de tattoo; that is they wear their i'll8lasses on top of their heads. This is to akdleate that they are racy, with it and a cut above a shop girl. f But it's 'Fat' Tom's body langauge that aselnates me most. About once a month inh the Colony Room Club you can see him sit- v1,6. upright on his bar stool swigging away ' o'er! suddenly but slowly the stool starts to ,‘.'l backwards and Tom describes the rerfect arc of 90 degrees and crashes full teri8th on to the floor. What is Tom trying • La tell us? It's hard to say. I've examined t'1111111 closely when he has come to rest on the n9or but I've never been able to get a ome of recognition out of him. But to titl3lne back to the sunglasses on the top of lie„head, it did ring a bell when I read in The have Zoo: `Female monkeys in captivity
toave been seen to offer themselves sexually
41 a male as a means of obtaining food wheeler's • . .' Ah yes, all those dinners in in the good old days.
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