Low life
Harvest time
Jeffrey Bernard
Sometimes when the lifts stop on the landing where we smokers gather, their doors open and there is no one inside or anywhere about. But the lift is not as empty as the onlookers think. I know that inside there stands the grim reaper on a scouting mission looking for new candidates. Why he has consistently overlooked me during the past six years visiting the Middlesex is something of a mystery to me.
Incidentally, in the past month three old friends of mine have died. When I say old friends, I mean that I have known them for years and years and that they used to be friends. In recent times I grew to dislike them, one of them quite intensely. I don't really know what I feel or what I am sup- posed to feel about somebody dying who I didn't like. Nothing, I suppose. But I am aware of the fact that bookmakers would have made me the rank outsider of the four of us to have lived the longest. I feel a sort of guilty sense of triumph, and now there are people who are beginning to admire what is left of me.
The stump of my right leg is considered to be a work of art, and I now think of Mr Cobb as being not so much the titanium sculptor who mended my hip two years ago but as more of a tree surgeon. He is spar- ing the other leg, but two weeks ago I believe was a close call. The bad news is that he tells me that I shall have to spend another fortnight in this dreadfully boring place since he doesn't want me to go home until I am fully independent. This is going to take a lot more than instruction and exercises from the physiotherapists, nearly all of them bullies to a woman.
I must say that it makes me smirk some- what since I don't think I have been fully independent for years, not up until 1980 anyway when there always had to be a crutch in the shape of a woman some- where. I think I preferred the female vari- ety of crutch although it often took me to places I didn't want to go to. It is to be hoped that the false leg I am to be fitted with soon will not lead me into the paths of righteousness.
Meanwhile readers of this column have been particularly kind and thoughtful and have bombarded me with get-well cards and well-wishing letters. Yesterday, a par- cel arrived containing two bottles of Stolichnaya. It came from Christina Foyle, of all people. I spoke at one of her literary lunches once and owned up to the fact that I had stolen a couple of books from her shop in my youth, so I hardly expected pre- sents from her, but the tree surgeon who knows when something needs watering has given me permission to have a couple if it makes me feel any better. It does.
So how boring will the next fortnight be? I listen out here on this landing to men talking rubbish all day and women dis- cussing their complaints in such detail that I could now qualify as a gynaecologist and arthritis specialist. The poor dears. I never realised what agony arthritis can be. For that matter, I never realised quite what agony the boredom of sleepless nights can be accompanied by distant snoring and moaning and nurses' stage whispers. Per- haps I should increase the size of my night- caps, but then I suppose I would end up with pancreatitis yet again and go from the frying pan into the fire.
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