Low life
Spectator sport
Jeffrey Bernard
Iam looking for opponents to play Cricket against the Coach and Horses this Coming summer. They shouldn't be too good or take it too seriously and it would help if they have their own ground. The England team are tailor-made for us, come to think of it. I have been warned not to arrange a fixture with the Post Office who it seems is packed with West Indian fast hewlers, and I gather that the BBC boasts some good quickies. We want a game, not a war.
So far we have the Grouch() and The Spectator to play against. (I'm not sure why I say we. I am merely an umpire these days.) It seems likely that we can have the Oval again for the Spectator match and there is an outside chance of being able to play at Arundel, a very pretty ground Indeed where the Australians always play the first match of their tours. The most attractive ground I have ever played on is
at Highclere. Unfortunately it is owned by Lord Carnarvon, a man not given to jest, especially with the bourgeoisie. I used to enjoy playing for Simon Courtauld and there were always plenty of good racing people at those matches. (Where are you now, Simon?)
But apart from trying to arrange fixtures what worries me most is Mike Gatting's crazy tour of South Africa. What a dread- ful, trouble-making mistake it has been. We don't seem to be making many runs in the Windies and all we make in South Africa is riots. The game ain't what it used to be but I still feel a bit miserable about being too much of a wreck to play any more. I can barely stand up under the weight of the bowler's sweaters.
Meanwhile, as life goes on without cricket, I hardly ever look at the sports pages these days. I very rarely back chasers or hurdlers and football leaves me quite cold. I don't like most of the people who watch it and neither do I like the look of the players. So the sporting life is pretty bleak at the moment, but the play has given, me a new game which consists of little bouts of being interviewed on radio and television. I am not very good at it but I have at last got used to it.
For some reason or other they have they recently been asking me about The Thirsty Muse, a new book by the American Tom Dardis. It is good if not harrowing and frightening to read about American alco- holic writers, with a section each on Faulkner, Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and O'Neill. What staggers and amazes me most about their lunatic excesses is how could they have possibly enjoyed it? Being very, very.drunk is an awful feeling and yet they ploughed through two bottles a day. I think it is nice to be in control most days. One takes a tumble down a staircase occasionally but Faulkner's third-degree burns caused by passing out on a bathroom steam pipe and O'Neill's lying in the snow with a broken leg is something else. But the two of them come over as better men than Fitzgerald or Hemingway. Heming- way strikes me as having been rather unpleasant while your Crack Up man seems to have been a bit silly away from his typewriter. None of it can have been anyone's idea of a 'good time'. More like hell.
The author makes a good point that there are writers who drink and drinkers who write. Not the same thing at all. As Keith Waterhouse has said, he never drinks when he is writing but he sometimes writes when he is drinking. Anyway, why 'Ah! Bistro.' on earth should the BBC have asked me to comment? I am not a writer but a hack and there is a world of difference.
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