Low life
Too hot to handle
Jeffrey Bernard
Like infants and geriatrics, diabetics have priority when it comes to having a shot of flu vaccine. Well, you could have fooled me. I have tried very hard without success to get a jab of the stuff. I do not
want to end up flat on my back for days on end and get pneumonia for a third time. No thank you. I am getting very supersti- tious about the title of that play at the Apollo and I do not like the idea of electricians climbing over the outside of the theatre to shorten the last neon word.
How long can one rely on one's resili- ence? Norman's mother, Mum to all the world, is in her nineties now and shouldn't be allowed out of her flat until the daffodils appear in Hyde Park. I too would stay in my attic until May if I knew of a daily visitor I could employ to puff the pillows, make soup and read me a chapter of Dickens at teatime. Luckily bacteria seem unwilling to live in this body. It is too hot for them.
But a pox on this Government. It would serve them right to see at first hand just what they have done to the National Health Service. I am now so careful of crossing the road for fear of being taken to University College Hospital — as bad as being flattened by a bus — that it now takes me 30 minutes to cross Cambridge Circus. Life is an obstacle race. I suppose it always has been one way or another. If the vodka don't get you the taxman must. Or something like that. But I have my eye on a .barmaid who I think might make an excellent personal social worker, although she reads the Sun and not the Guardian. (To her advantage, that.) She can chat to
Mum for hours and keep her happy. What amazing patience.
I feel rather bad nowadays about avoid- ing Mum at my end of the bar for fear of getting a detailed weather report every morning. When I walk into the pub dren- ched from head to foot I do not want to be told that it is raining and that it was in fact raining in Hendon earlier that morning. I have tried explaining to Mum that, as a general rule, it tends to be warm in the summer and cooler during the winter but the weather is a constant source of amaze- ment to her, as are the box office returns at the Apollo to her son. He bought me a steak and kidney pudding yesterday and unfortunately I fell asleep in the kitchen last night at midnight and burned the bloody thing.
It also burned the excellent casserole dish that Private Eye gave me as a wedding present some years ago. They must have been kicking themselves about that ever since the day they turned against me. They gave us two, actually, the other one being so big I rarely have a use for it although I suppose I could ladle sangria from it during the summer months. That would be appo- site since they like saying I drink a little. I believe that they think references to booz- ing are terribly funny. There is no puritan like a satirical puritan. I wish I could laugh so easily.
For a moment just now I thought I had got flu. I began to shiver and so dumped the tea and poured myself a drink. As it turned out I had forgotten to switch on the fire. Still, the drink is here so I had better drink it. I have known some momentous days begin with an incident as trivial as that. I had a row with someone once early one morning in bed and thought I must put some distance 'twixt me and she. The next thing I knew I was standing by the rails at Newmarket caressing a wad of money in my trouser pocket. Oddly enough the name of the horse that obliged me at no less than 50-1 was Ovaltine. What a turn-up, in all senses of the phrase.
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