Low life
Not in front of the nurses
Jeffrey Bernard
Unhappiness is one of the best kept secrets in the world although sometimes the truth is blurted out by people having nervous breakdowns and becoming insane. I thought about it a lot last week on my fourth and very nearly my most depressing visit to the Middlesex hospital this year, which is why I was away last week. Hot weather abroad is to be savoured and soaked up, but here that recent spell of it ruined my appetite and I went three days without a bite to eat. In the end, I had to phone the police in the middle of the night to come and bring me some insulin from the sitting room to my bed just ten yards away. They thought I looked so awful that they sent for an ambulance and thus it was that I ended up in the Middlesex's worst ward contemplating the misery I men- tioned at the beginning of this column. It was the same ward that discharged me too quickly in January saying that the infection in my right foot was cured, only for Mr Cobb to add it to his collection two weeks later.
Last week was the first time I have had a proper row in a hospital. I got more than a little angry when they kept ignoring the same infection I now have in my left foot, inaccurately nowadays described by the medical profession as being my 'good' leg. I raised my voice to the staff sister and said to her, 'You have been promising to clean and re-dress my foot for three hours now. What the hell is going on?' At the time, she was re-making an empty bed. I said 'For fuck's sake, do something about it.' She said, 'Look here, Mr Bernard, we've had a very busy morning and two patients have nearly died since breakfast.' I said, 'I'm not in the least bit fucking surprised.' She came back with some nonsense about not swear- ing in front of her students and I said that if they were grown up and going to become nurses they had better get used to the occa- sional swear word and I told her she also should never go to the cinema again or watch television after 9 p.m. if so-called bad language upset her too much. And I also said that I wanted to hang on to my left foot and leg although they didn't help the spontaneity of life that I used to enjoy so much.
The smoking area, the landing by the lifts, was just as it always has been for years, but with a different cast. These hor- ribly regular visits to the Middlesex are becoming like quarterly outings to see The Mousetrap. The dialogue is always the same, as are the characters. There is always the stoic making light of having cancer the poor sod on this occasion had carcino- ma of the oesophagus — and all those awful old women with tarty nighties designed for the young are still sitting about like old dragons who have had their teeth pulled and whose flames have been snuffed out. How odd it is that the only nice doctors there are Mr Cobb's team who are collecting pieces of me bit by bit. Mr Sweetman, Mr Cobb's registrar, came to see me a few times to see if I was all right and I was rather touched considering I wasn't one of his patients this time. And now I'm home again and have finally lost faith with Prozac and all the other wretched pills that are supposed to stop you from feeling wretched. I repeat to nit- picking readers that I don't have barely an ounce of self-pity but it does depress and irritate me to think that I can't simply get up, walk across the room and open or close a window.
Another thing I find depressing is the business of Taki's yacht having been blown up in Piraieus by some lunatic shit. The fact that Taki is not short of a few shillings does not diminish the plain nastiness of the deed and, anyway, to blow up a really beau- tiful yacht is as pig-ignorant as slashing any work of art except for one entered to win the Turner prize. My own wild guess is that the yacht was sunk with envy being the main ingredient of the deed. It so often is the motivation and I even have friends who can't bear the odd occasions when life is going smoothly for me. Well, they needn't feel envious at the moment and a couple of them will be pleased to hear that I sent a shirt to the laundry last week that had £100 in the pocket. Just another one of God's custard pies.
Previous page
