Low life
A breath of fresh air
Jeffrey Bernard
Iwent out last week for the first time in a month. I hobbled on someone's arm to L'Epicure for lunch, tasting cold but fresh air at last, but what should have been a welcome outing was a little spoiled by my kind host who kept trying to talk me into having a drink. You see, I am on the wagon and have not had a drink for three weeks.
There is not much virtue in that because it was my pancreas that initially made me climb on to this boring wagon, but once on it I thought I would ride it for a while to give the old body a break. My host had laid on a bottle of good vodka for me which was waiting in an ice-bucket. Normally I would have dived in to it head-first, but I said no to that and no to some champagne to start with and then no to the wine that followed.
But my host wouldn't take no for an answer. He said, 'Have just one'. Then he said, 'Just have a sip. Go on. Just one little sip. It won't do you any harm'. This went on and on and I got more and more fed up with it. I think I may have been invited to give a master-class.
Anyway, it is extremely boring to be nagged about not having a drink. It makes people feel very uncomfortable if you don't join them in a bar and later on in oblivion. It is odd that they don't understand, though, that it makes the man on the wagon feel awful too to have someone try and press him. What on earth would peo- ple make of it if one tried to press a non- smoker to have a cigarette? 'Go on, have a puff. Just one little puff. It won't do you any harm.'
Well, the man who wanted to press me into having a drink damn nigh drove me to it. But I am still holding out and shall have one in my own good time when I feel like `Half an hour later you want to see it again.' It. When I got home it was with some effort that I put the kettle on instead of going to the fridge for some ice. That evening, as I sat on my sofa feeling distinctly shaky, Norman telephoned to say, `There's a man here in the bar who wants to talk to you. Says his name is Alex Hig- gins and plays snooker. Do you want to talk to him?' That nearly knocked me over and I thought how typical of Norman, who knows everything, never to have heard of Alex Higgins. It is not every day that I am telephoned by ex-world champions, snook- er players or even boxers, so I said to put him on.
We had a fairly long chat and Higgins said that he wanted to meet me, which came as something of a surprise. He must have recognised a soul mate in the play, for he sure as hell doesn't read The Spectator. So he is going to come up one day soon to my nick on the 14th floor and I shall then have a drink if not before.
But apart from being chivvied about not drinking at the moment I am getting a lot of stick from friends about not making more effort to get out and about. What on earth do I want to go out for in this weath- er? Your muscles will seize up, they tell me, and I tell them that I haven't got any. To quote Brian the Burglar, 'If you haven't got any socks, you can't pull them up'. He once addressed that remark to a magistrate but it is not recorded what that gentleman replied. I think he said, 'Two years'.
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