Low life
In the swim
Jeffrey Bernard
Yesterday, I was sent a cutting of an interview I did for the Scotsman. In it the writer said that although I am 59 I look 90 and that my legs are even thinner than the beloved walking stick The Spectator pre- sented me with. But then, in the afternoon, Keith Waterhouse told me that the play was doing good business in Australia so I managed to forget that the Scotsman also said that the cyst on the back of my head was as big as a football. I forgot that even until now when the first coughing fit of the day woke me up. Yes, I will get a cat. I don't think that a cat would mind a smok- er. If I can't be loved for my face then I want to be loved for my catfood.
What else? Well, I have an appointment at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital today to find out if they have to break my arm to re- set it again. I dread that possibility, believ- ing as I do that they give you a general anaesthetic and then introduce football fans into the operating theatre to give you a good kicking. The surgeon points to the 'I don't think he realises the gravity of the situation' spot and then blows his whistle. But it is faces, not arms, that worry me most. All my friends and acquaintances have the same faces every day. Norman and Gordon look exactly like Norman and Gordon from one damned day to another. I would like to see somebody make waves in the sea of faces I see every day.
In the last week of May Deborah, the blond-haired factotem, and I have birth- days one day apart. I hope to celebrate 60 years with hardly a hiccup and am fixing a silly and expensive party for us both on a boat. It will cruise the Thames and only frogmen will be able to gatecrash. It is the usual thing to have a jazz band on such occasions but I think the Amadeus String Quartet would more befit my years. Debo- rah can have rock and roll in the engine room. She will be a mere 27 and can swim 50 lengths of a bathing pool. I could never do that and the nearest I have ever come to swimming was to be a chronic bed-wetter at my prep school. That could have been a blessing in disguise had I smoked in bed in those days as I do now.
Anyway, I think there is something faint- ly daft about birthday parties over the age of, say, 12, but 60 is 60 and I only wish I could say that they had been 60 as glorious years as those played by Anna Neagle in the film about Queen Victoria, Sixty Glori- ous Years. Prince Albert must have turned in his grave, Hall or Memorial if he saw Anton Walbrook portraying him. Oh how films in general and Hollywood in particu- lar have spoiled history for me. If I read a sentence about Henry VIII I see Charles Laughton, and Elizabeth I as Bette Davis. If there is to be a remake of Sixty Glorious Years I hope that Ned Sherrin will cast me as John Brown. Poacher turned gamekeep- er is a role I have never played.
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