Low life
Invalidity benefits
Jeffrey Bernard
Idon't have a lot to tell you today. I have been in bed or lying on my sofa for a week and all I have observed is the ceiling, the walls, my palm tree, the bust of Nelson on my windowsill and some appalling televi- sion. I have to conclude that the English will laugh at almost anything and that very nearly the entire population of the world must lead even duller lives than that of an invalid to enjoy soap operas.
The only stab of pain I have had to endure was that of writing a review of Andrew Sinclair's biography of Francis Bacon. Harder than you might think. It certainly wasn't made easier by the fact that Bacon and I were friends. I found myself wanting to knock him a bit since biographers lean overboard the other way. A genius maybe, but a clown in champagne with phrases like, 'Life is but a short inter- val between birth and death,' uttered at five-minute intervals on occasions.
Of course, one of the first things I looked at in Sinclair's book was the index. I get three mentions and one of them refers to me as having been an 'elegant scrounger'. Oh, he shoved the odd £50 note in my pocket at times but I never asked for it and I don't know where he got the idea from that I was elegant. What is missed and will be again and again by future biographers is the fact that Francis liked very few people indeed. And why should he have done? Most of us are arseholes.
Which reminds me, the only visitor of much interest to this cell last week was the lovely sister Sally, who looked after me a year ago when I had the horrendous opera- tion on my broken hip. She told me about a man she came across when she worked in casualty some time ago who had a golf ball jammed up his anus. More to the point, she turned up with a bottle of vodka saying that she had read in this column that I was get- ting fed up with dispensing the stuff to every visitor. She is a noble nurse and if Florence Nightingale had done her rounds with vodka and not a lamp then Scutari would have been a happier place. There must have been a lot of it at hand. My other visitor was my brother, Oliver, who kindly cooked me supper and left the oven on so that I woke up to a beautifully warm prison. And now Vera has got a new cure for my muscle-wasting ills. Breakfast. I lie in bed like a chick in the nest with my beak wide open and she pops a bacon sandwich with a touch of brown sauce into it, accompanied by a pot of tea and a reminder to take my insulin. That might not have been Elizabeth David's idea of a breakfast but the bacon sandwich is one of the great unsung dishes of the world.
Sometimes Vera makes me an egg sand- wich and that is not to be sneezed at either. Eating when reclining makes a marvellous mess. The plaster cast on my leg has no daft autographs on it but it does have egg yolk, gravy and sauce bolognese trickling down it.
The awful thing is going to be sawn off tomorrow, thank the Lord, and for all I care they can take the leg with it. I shall not be needing it again and it will give my friends the opportunity to make facetious jokes about my not being able to have the leg over. And now that the ulcer on the other leg is not healing quickly I suppose that they will eventually call me quite truly legless.
All of this may be too much for others to bear. Not for me, though. I must send Vera out to buy me a thinner than usual visitors' book. Put not your trust in duchesses or ex- lovers. Only Vera and assorted nurses lighten this place now and a plumber would be welcome, as would a cook. Vera kindly prepares meals for me, but cooking on one leg is exhausting and a little tricky. I sup- pose I shall have to go the whole hog and buy a parrot.
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