High life
Ordeal by newspaper
Taki
am by now thoroughly convinced that going to bed early, laying off the booze and tobacco, and in general taking care of oneself can seriously damage one's health. Even worse, it can cause irreparable injury to the brain and bring on symptoms of megalomania. As Jeffrey (Blixen) Bernard once said, 'There is nothing more danger- ous than someone healthy.'
Take, for example, my recent troubles. No sooner had I come home from hospital than I was made to feel like Fidel Castro. My slightest whim was treated like a ukase by those unfortunates who work for me — not to mentibn my immediate family — while any difference of opinion I may have encountered has become as rare as original thought and writing is to Princess Michael of Kent. Even my cousin, Leonidas Lada- kos, a Euro MP for Andreas the First, put politics aside when he rang me from Strasbourg to inquire about my health. 'I agree with everything you say, just don't get excited,' was the way he checkmated me when I accused him of working for a bunch of crooks. Which, needless to say, made me angrier than if he had defended Ali Papa and his 40 thieves. (Four thousand is closer to the mark.) Yes, a heart attack breeds a dangerous kind of solipsism. I spend my days wor- rying about blood pressure, clogged arter- ies, and girls. In that order. It is enough to drive a man to drink, and I admit it has.
I also relax a lot. I wake up early, the earliest since Pentonville, and read the newspaper obituaries. There was once an old Greek shipowner by the • name of Markos Nomikos, who used to laugh out loud while reading them, but I have not as yet reached that stage. Next I go on to the sports pages, which normally should be a pleasant read. Alas, it ain't always so.
Only last week I read that John McEn- roe plans to join the striking American professional football players on the picket line. The pros who are striking are among the highest paid people on earth. The average National Football League salary is $300,000, and that does not include re- siduals such as advertising megabucks, public appearance moolah, and various other freebies the behemoths receive from the sports-mad great American public. The football season lasts from late September until early January, although training camp begins as early as late August. Some stars make over a million smackers per annum, a very short annum, I might add. Yet they're striking for more of the root of all drugs, because they think they have man- agement over a barrel. Now McEnroe has joined them. Personally I don't blame him. If I was as rich as that barbarian, I too would be shocked to discover that there are athletes who make as little as £250,000 per year while in their twenties.
American football pros are to a man college grads, but that doesn't mean they know how to read or write. Far from it. A large majority of them are illiterate, and have gone through university on sports scholarships which do not require them to attend classes. I guess this is what attracts McEnroe to them, the same McEnroe who was once a vice-president of the Associa- tion of Tennis Players union, but who almost never attended ATP meetings.
But there I go again getting excited. The mini-doctor tells me to stop reading news- papers and magazines, but my masochistic side says no. In fact, I've opted to do the opposite. Instead of a stress test, I read glossy American and British monthlies. If the crap they write doesn't kill me, no karate or tennis contest will.
How do I know? Easy. I have just read a long article about the live-in man of a dressmaker by the name of St Laurent. The article made the live-in sound like a combination of Metternich, Bismarck, Mozart, Voltaire, Oscar Wilde and Pepe Le Moco. It made the rest of the Frog seamstresses sound almost as great. Once I finished feeling sick over the Vanity Fair piece, I took my heart-beat and it was fine. Which proves to me I have a long way to go before I meet the fellow in the bright nightgown.
Previous page
