Low life
Half measures
Jeffrey Bernard
▪ im getting a little sick of Soho. There ▪ was a time when you could always find
somebody there to talk to — your actual conversation I mean — but recently it's been all World Cup and, for longer than that, money. It's really awful how money and the wretched subject of the cost of liv' ing have become the main talking points not just in Soho but everywhere. Like the man said about having had an unhapPY childhood, money is not a fit subject for conversation. What's more it's the ones who are fairly well lined — staff hacks 00 national newspapers and advertising people — who do the most moaning about money• The Americans have a phrase for it, 'crying poor', and it's particularly insulting to crY poor to a man who's holding sweet bugger all in his bin. But now there's yet another form of moaning and it appears in print written by journalists who get banged up When they go to report wars. Surely it's part of the job and to be expected; I've a funny feeling that the man who got nicked after Chatting to the Queen while sitting on the edge of her bed was from the Sunday Times Insight Team.
This one seems destined for Broadmoor. To ask the Queen for a cigarette is rock bot- tom and it's also being a trifle mean with Your expenses. I know that most journalists live on their expenses and bank their salaries but it reeks of meanness and I ex- Peet a conversational moan about the cost of living led up to the business of tapping Her Majesty for a fag. Another giveway Was the business of stealing a half bottle of Wine. It's the half that appals me. I have, seen halves being bought by men who think they're actually entertaining some poor woman in a restaurant and I'm damned if I Can think of anything less stylish. Perhaps these half bottles are kept for the staff. A footman's life is terribly hard. It's also ludicrous to assume that the Queen smokes in bed. To nod off while re-reading Black Beauty and set that lot on fire would be a Major disaster although experts tell me that heat can improve wine. (A wine merchants in Dean Street was hit by incendiary bombs during the Blitz and apparently it perform- ed miracles for what was saved from the cellar.) And where was the Duke? Raiding the fridge?
No it must have been a very nasty ex- perience all round and I'm no stranger to being asked for cigarettes by people when Prn lying in my bed. Usually what's hap- pened is that I've jumped the gun by getting into bed thinking I'd he followed. But what these ladies do is light up a cigarette and then give you a hundred specious reasons for having to go home. 'My husband may Phone from Paris.' My cat can't bear to be left alone. 'But we've only known each other for a day."Listen, I like you. I really do, but not like that.' The baby sitter will go mad if I'm late.' Sadly I've never had a footman to summon and have these people thrown out before they smoke all my Cigarettes. I resign myself to the situation, take a Valium and then fall asleep and burn the bedspread with the last fag. I now have a fire extinguisher by my bed but I never really know whether to aim it at my Privates, the lady or the bedspread. But, skint as I am, I wouldn't give house- room to a half bottle of anything. And now 1:n1 off to Kingsclere for a ten-week rest From Buckingham Palace perils and World Cup post mortems, but I fear they'll be discussing the cost of living in the local where I may pop in for the entire full-size bottle occasionally. 1 shall be reporting to You on the subject of the countryside in '111Y, herbaceous borders, cuckoo spit, Possible fairies at the bottom of the Guar- dian and with luck someone beautiful may 'teak into my bedroom and ask me for a cigarette. If it's my favourite clairvoyant shall 1 give the footman the night off.
Previous page
