Low life
Kippers are off
Jeffrey Bernard
Ishould have been with you last week but I was as sick as a dog. The pancreas is infuriated again. How anyone can eat sweetbreads is beyond me. It was too depressing to linger alone in bed in the Islington basement so I moved in with a very kind friend nearby for a couple of days and then, when I felt I was becoming a nuisance to her, I moved into a hotel in Frith Street to try and recover and lick the wounds. I can tell you that the hotel lark in London is a bloody expensive business, but I thought that room service might be a nurse of sorts that I didn't have to be beholden to. Room service is a Spanish woman out of Fawlty Towers who had to be taught how to make tea properly. She was making a pot of the stuff with only one tea bag and whatever happened to loose tea?
Anyway, I have been lying here staring at the ceiling and having many morbid thoughts about Oscar Wilde dying in a hotel room. Not that it matters much where you die as long as it doesn't incon- venience friends, but it would be nicer to exit stage left to a round of applause than to be discovered by room service who scream fearfully on such occasions in all the Hollywood movies I have ever seen. Poor Oscar. Of course, the only thing that would make the French room service scream would be the thought of the de- ceased not having paid his or her bill. But this is a nice enough hotel done up in a mock Victorian style with reproduction brass fittings on the bath and room furni- ture that doesn't stink of the age of Utility and the 1940s. Unfortunately the walls and the ceiling I stare at are paper thin and the noise reminds me of being in hospital where the nurses will do anything for you except allow you to sleep at night. On the second morning here I decided I couldn't face another pot of weak tea and a croissant for £3.50 so I staggered out to try to find a proper breakfast and the sad thing is that the traditional workman's café has all but disappeared. It is very sad. London lis now littered with the most awful sand- wich bars. What ever happened to eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes and bubble and squeak? Sandwiches wrapped in clingfilm and take-away cardboard cups of instant coffee are another sign of these awful times we live in. But in some ways they are preferable to the alternative cults of luna- tics like Jane Fonda and her ilk. I would also like to know why it is that you can't get a boiled egg anywhere. And another thing: you can't get a kipper in the cafe — if you can find a café — because the owners say a kipper stinks all day. They don't smell all day in the Savoy or the Ritz, though, I've noticed.
Anyway, it is pointless to chew the cud over such matters and it is like reminiscing about dead friends. So, on the way back from the fruitless search for a simple breakfast I tottered into the Coach for a cup of coffee and some Perrier water. Our host took me to one side to express the opinion that apart from my pancreas he thought that having no fixed abode was killing me. The man is a sleuth. But even though I am tapping for coda, as musicians say about someone on the brink, I can't help feeling slightly amused by the looks people have given me since I have been ill. I have seen those expressions so many times on the faces of visitors sitting around the bedsides of the doomed when I have been in hospitals. It is a look of concern badly veneered with jollity. In hospitals this look is accompanied by such catchphrases as, 'You'll be up in no time.' `You're looking much better today.' When you come out . . ."The doctor says you're coming along fine.' Etc, etc. And some- times you can see the captive audience lying in his bed thinking, 'Why don't you piss off and leave me in peace?' Anyway, I am determined to be back on my feet to take the daughter up the Nile next month. I would hate to go up it d la Dr Livingstone's last trip, on a stretcher. That would be impossible anyway nowadays since it is very unlikely that one could find four porters willing to do the job. It must have been terribly depressing for Living- stone to have been found by a hack in the jungle. It is unthinkable that a man busy exploring something or other and wishing to be left in peace in his swamp or jungle should come face to face with a Guardian hack.
Previous page
