Low life
Rice with everything
Jeffrey Bernard
At long last the Westminster Hospital has fixed me up with some home help. The said help is a very pleasant woman, origi- nally from Granada, who comes in every morning at 9.30 to wash me, dress me and clear up whatever is lying about. She is very valuable, as are my nieces and the bomb- shell from the Soho Brasserie, Roxy Beau- jolais. Try putting on a pair of trousers, tucking a shirt in at the same time, with one hand. You can't. When Josey finally zips me up I find it depressingly symbolic of the age I have reached. There was a time . . . Oh well.
Anyway, the minor inconveniences that go with broken arm and elbow are getting me down. I can't peel a potato, although Josey would if I could carry some home, so it is rice with everything. Also, I got stuck in Wandsworth last Monday when I should have been meeting David Gower for a drink in the Groucho Club. What a glori- ous batsman he is. I was choked that we didn't meet up. Apparently he sent me his regards and told them that he hopes I recover soon, although he doesn't know me. He reads The Spectator, however. I wonder what Ian Botham reads. The Sun? Perhaps that conjecture isn't fair but he sometimes bats as though he does.
But, apart from providing home help, the Westminster Hospital is driving me mad. Everything they do takes two hours, right down to the trivial business of getting a prescription for pain-killing tablets. I am afraid that vodka doesn't work for pains worse than the petty ones of divorce, bereavement or moving house. And the tablets don't go with vodka although I am trying to teach them to do so.
The last time I wrote here I forgot to tell you about the strange chat I overheard in the West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds. In the next cubicle a small boy was having his ears syringed out and being quizzed by a doctor. It transpired that while he had been fast asleep the night before, his brother had crept into his room and filled his ears with peanut butter. I knew there must be some use for the stuff. But it is rather extraordinary how our vari- ous orifices fascinate children and I thank God that I am not a banana.
Meanwhile, Norman's mother — the poor old thing is 93 — is in hospital with a broken hip caused by a fall. That can be a serious business at her age but she seems to be coming along okay. What tickles the number one son is the fact that she thinks she is in an hotel. She swears she will never come back to it and that it is not as good as the Miami Hilton. He has offered to look after her rings but dementia stops there and she will not let go of the £50,000 job that we have all had our eyes on for some time now.
Norman is a kind but sometimes embar- rassing hospital visitor, paying calls as he does to every bed in the ward and then announcing in a loud voice gloomy prog- noses on the doomed inmates. 'He hasn't got long,' is his usual verdict. He should wear a black cap on his hospital rounds.
And now Josey has just left, telling me that I am very brave. She should hear me moaning in the night. I am just a baby in long trousers with what she takes to be a glass of water in one hand. I wish I could take her on full-time.
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