Low life
I need you, Vera
Jeffrey Bernard
During the last few months I have thought about giving up writing anything at all, apart from this column, with increasing frequency and if it wasn't for having to pay the rent and the strong belief that cham- pagne is not a luxury but a necessity I would stop altogether right now. As it is, I now lie — sitting is too much trouble — about in my flat and I would be comatose if it weren't for the fact that my trivial thoughts are so easy to gather and that's not the end of it. In two months time, Vera is going to retire and the only other home carer who is pleasant and efficient that I know works in the Covent Garden area and only comes here in an emergency. I now really need a home carer like Vera and with a growing kind of wonder I realise that I always have. How odd it is that young people now have nowhere to go and so cling on to their homes, whereas from the very day I left school — and that was too soon — I couldn't wait to tie up an apple in a hand- kerchief and with my stick set off down the road into the sunny future. You would think, I would anyway, that my mother would have been delighted to see the last of her children flee the nest, but she wasn't.
But, as I say, I now want to give up work- ing. Since my kidneys collapsed and gave up on me in June, I have felt like a small boy on a seemingly pleasant outing who suddenly moans, 'I want to go home.' I would also like to avoid irritating and mess- ing about editors, not for their sake, but because it depresses me. There are very few nastier things in what I still call Fleet Street than accepting and agreeing to write a piece because of feeling flattered to be asked only to realise suddenly that you loathe everything about it and can't bear to do it. Better to disconnect altogether. Any- thing has to be pretty awful for dialysis to become a preferable alternative to it and sometimes I feel that I would be willing to lie down in the Middlesex Hospital and be dialysed all day long if only you were allowed to smoke in bed.
And this morning I was rather offended to be sent in the post a copy of the annual report of something called Research into Aging. I don't think I am old or quite aging, I think I am merely at a semi-colon so to speak. But a chapter headed 'The aging process' makes fairly interesting and rather alarming reading. Apparently, incontinence, which is something I could do without, afflicts up to 20 per cent of older people liv- ing in the community, 35 per cent of hospi- talised elders and 50 per cent of nursing home residents. The loss of dignity and self- esteem must be absolutely crushing.
Until reading this report, I had almost forgotten as well that a hell of a lot of old people show some sign of malnutrition, and the Middlesex keep trying to make me swallow the most awful supplements to make me gain weight. There could be an industry there waiting to be tapped by some clever fellow and I for one would give a lot of muscle or two; and another thing which concerns me is verification of the increasing risks of strokes and heart attacks. Until a year ago, my blood pres- sure was perfection. Yesterday it was 215 over 110. Not very good and we shall be falling over all the time any day now. I have already fallen over a lot since my legs both went to pieces ten years ago, and annoying- ly in my case I was always watched falling with no sympathy, it being assumed that I was pissed. Alzheimer's and eyesight wors- ening don't bear thinking about.
Research into Aging say in their accom- panying letter that if there's any help I can give them in making their work better known it would be greatly appreciated. I can't do anything, but looking about me I don't see anyone under the age of, say, 50 who is likely or able to appreciate just how awful getting older can be. How awful, too, that rich bitches dying in Bournemouth don't leave a few quid to help the aged instead of leaving it to flea-ridden cats and incontinent dogs.
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