Low life
A new tonic
Jeffrey Bernard
t has just been pointed out to me that I could write about the heat as everyone else has and still does. And it is true but I wish that they would give it a break and realise that compared to, say, New York City, we have a climate which presents us with very little to moan about, except for the way that various authorities cope with it. The physi- cal discomfort and pains of some places with extreme climates such as New York and Korea can be unbearable. As far as I can remember the water still runs, and a snowflake or a fallen leaf on a railway line does not stop the trains in Russia or Canada from packing up altogether. My only com- plaint and sympathy lies with the shortage of vegetables and bad luck for gardeners. But as long as there is orange juice and soda water for the vodka, do please be quiet.
It is air I am short of here on my 14th floor and in an attempt to catch a breeze last week I took a boat trip from Charing Cross Pier to Greenwich and back and in the best of company. Surprisingly, the river boat was one of the few wheelchair accessi- ble places in this dust bowl of a city. It was the first time I have beheld, albeit from a distance, the new Fleet Street and the empires of the Telegraph and Rupert Mur- doch's patch of teetotal land in the midst of an already smoke free desert. The token loveable Cockney engineer of the boat who doubled as a commentator was a fairly good guide for the tourists, but his few jokes fell on deaf ears of Japanese tourists, with fixed smiles that were no more friendly than fixed bayonets. I did, at one point, ask him to refrain from going on too much about the ghastly Sun and then he did point out to the passengers that it could be read in just two minutes, if you could call that reading. But then he went on rather nicely to tell them, 'You buy the Sun, but you take the Tele- graph.' He also pointed out Sir Ian McK- ellen's residence calling him the well known Shakespearean actor, and then adding as an aside, 'A man you don't want to stand in front of'. I gave him the only titter on the boat in response to that dubious jest.
My companion and I, as food writers like to say, found a small French restaurant nicely distanced from the candy floss, hot dogs and clicking of Nikon cameras, and I think it was called The Spread Eagle. I also got the breeze I was looking for and even found a wheelchair accessible Gents which made it unnecessary for me to attempt to break my 13 hour record without a pee.
When I got home my nerves, by now soothed by the water of the Thames, were aggravated yet again by news via the tele- phone that a man I know was trying to write a book about mirrors. It has become some- thing of an obsession with him, and having done badly in physics at school I certainly know less about optics than I do about heat.
This man wants to know why it is that although our image in a mirror is reversed we are not upside down. No doubt the explanation is extremely simple but the would-be author is possibly going out of his mind since he is on the point of believing that mirrors can think or at the very least trick you. Like the meaning of life it is not worth a moment's consideration that some- where in South London a man is sitting in front of a mirror silently screaming.
At least it will keep his mind off the weather, and I am reminded by this wonder- ful spell of it and its possible continuation, that it is at last feasible to have a holiday in that much neglected country, England. Oh that the hosts and landladies of England could organise a decent meal or a decent conversation, let alone a piss-up in a brew- ery. As it is the horrors of no ice, spirits served in wine glasses and the ever present bottled mayonnaise by the dead outer leaves of lettuce, will find me imprisoned in Lon- don or spending a fortune on a ticket for a smokeless aeroplane bound for a country which realises that olive oil is not for dab- bing on eczema and where sunshine and heat are life enhancing and not grounds for complaint and discontent.
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