Low life
Source of wonder
Jeffrey Bernard
The label on a bottle of Smirnoff vodka in front of me states that Pierre Smir- noff ceased purveying the stuff to the Czars of Russia in 1917. I have been pondering the implications for two days, resorting as I have, out of boredom or depression, to reading trivia. My Kettner's diary is also full of information that has been keeping me awake. Did you know that a size 81/2 shoe is size 43 on the Continent and that. according to my Economist diary, the
population of Somalia was 5,116,000 at the last count? This desk of mine is as full of information as the British Museum. Schweppes have been going since 1783, which is a lot of bubbles, and I am advised to keep my lighter fuel and highly purified pig insulin away from children. It also appears that I have £50 on Manchester United to win the FA Cup at 5-1 with, Victor Chandler.
This room is like Aladdin's Cave and I don't know why I bother to budge from it. I suppose the best reading material I have is either in the kitchen on the sauce bottle labels or in old diaries that I haven't thrown away. I am spellbound to read that on 24 July 1978 I bought butter, tea, eggs, vodka and firelighters. How could I have wanted firelighters in July? I was, after all, married at the time. And my 1976 diary is very odd. I seem to have spent most of my time in Bentley's Oyster Bar, Ronnie Scott's and Newmarket. Where on earth did the money come from? But most surprising is that I see it is exactly eight years ago today that I started writing for the Spectator. It was Geoffrey Wheatcroft who started me and I don't know whether to be eternally grateful or wonder did he have his tongue in his cheek. Eight years amazes me. There have been some very jolly times, like the occasion when I introduced a drunken, socialist, conscien- tious objector friend to Enoch Powell at a Spectator party, and I lovingly remember the time Alexander Chancellor sent me to Glasgow in the hope that I might get beaten up. I think he called it an Arts Festival.
I only wish that along with the old diaries I had kept all the letters I've received from readers. They would make a book in themselves and have been rather odd at times. I very much liked hearing from an American income tax inspector based in 'Smoking or non-smoking?' Washington who cynically sent me five dollars for a drink. And there has been the occasional note from bizarre undergradu- ates to the effect that they would rather study the low life than the academic one. Fools. It has to be far cosier in Oxford or Cambridge. Our boat sinks every year in Soho.
And I was reminded sharply of the fact last Monday by the police who arrested me for falling asleep in a taxi. They now have the most amazing computers do the police. A detective pressed something and Scot- land Yard informed him in a flash that I had kicked a car last year and knocked over a rubber plant in a restaurant the year before. I was shown the yellow card so to speak. And yet some lucky undergraduates profess that they'd like to swap with me. What they can't seem to understand is that even when you get a trip to Barbados or up the Mississippi you find yourself there when you arrive. There is no escape. Keep reading the sauce bottle and vodka bottle labels.
Previous page
