Low life
Excess baggage
Jeffrey Bernard
The lease of this flat runs out on Sunday and I shall be on the move again. Where to? You tell me. I shall be homeless for two weeks. Similar eruptions have been shaking me ever since January 1987 and had it not been for the play, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, I would have drowned in a mire of despair. Both Keith Waterhouse and Peter O'Toole are gold medallists in the life-saving business. Hopefully Dennis Waterman will continue to hold my head above water in Australia in the new year. But it is the next fortnight that is worrying me. It would probably be cheaper to go abroad than hang around London and with that in mind I have been studying the pages in the Michelin guide devoted to Corsica.
I don't even know why I hit on the idea of Corsica but it is now fixed in my mind. O'Toole advised me to go to Calvi the last time I met him. Frank Muir told me that Ajaccio is like a Mediterranean Brighton or Blackpool so that's out, and Graham Lord said to go to Porto Vecchio. The only thing that puts me off travelling is the fact that I have to take Monica with me wherev- er I go. How Olympia typewriters can describe Monica Electric de Luxe as being portable is beyond my ken. She is about as Portable as Erin Pizzey or Andrea Dworkin. Even without her I need to be at sea level now that I can no longer negotiate hills or inclines. But I suppose I am lucky to have the fare to Corsica which is some- thing the poor devils who sleep under Waterloo Bridge have not got. And speaking of Waterloo Bridge I am reminded that some years ago Sandy Fawkes told me that she was contemplating suicide by throwing herself into the river but hadn't got the taxi fare to the bridge. I Somewhat ungallantly offered to give it to her but we had a drink instead and that is all water under the bridge now, thank God. I had fleetingly thought of going back to Antibes but that place without Graham „,.Greene must be like eggs without bacon. what would help to facilitate a fortnight's holiday would be to be paid the money the evening Standard have owed me for a few Weeks. Yesterday a woman from that news- Paper telephoned the Coach and Horses to ask me my opinions of London. It annoys Lille- I am not prepared to stand in a corner 0Y a telephone box for ten minutes and be ,I_Plizzed. She should have come to the pub, bought a drink and we could have talked. You see, what these people do is try to fill a page at no cost to themselves. You are also doing a highly paid staff writer's job for him or her. I suppose most people feel flattered to be asked anything by a newspa- per. There was once a woman on the Sun- day Times who called me and wanted to know all she could about Henry Cecil. All she did know was that he is the country's top racehorse trainer. Did I know him? Yes. Christ almighty, I thought. Why did the bloody editor get her to write about Henry Cecil? It is unlikely that our editor here, Dominic Lawson, will ever ask me to write about nuclear physics. If he does I shall telephone my contact at Woman's Journal for a helping hand.
But there was a breath of fresh air last week in the Groucho Club when I met an old friend, a woman journalist who com- missioned me to write a piece about 'life and death and how bloody awful it all is'. I think I can just about manage that. What on earth could I have been talking about that prompted her to put that commission- ing slip into my pocket as I dosed off? Rub- bish, I suppose.
And now I could kick myself. A cheque from the Evening Standard has this minute dropped on to the doormat.
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