Low life
End of the line
Jeffrey Bernard
Ihave just had a letter from an old lady who lives in Suffolk. She is 82 years old and she wrote to say that it wasn't much fun for her to have been snowed in for a couple 01 days. On the morning of the third day she heard the noise of a car outside which was as sweet as the US Cavalry making a timely appearance. It was the postman. He hand' ed her a letter from H.M. Government which advised her to refrain from oral 0,1; anal sex from now on. Marvellous, isn't ir. At 82. When she heard that car she must have thought it was the local council arrivea with some hot soup, a lump of coal, a fiver and a kiss and a cuddle. No, forget the lols and we will have to cuddle each other Ow our eyes now. But it is good that the Government are now so caring when it Is fractionally too late. I had a gut feeling the first time I had sex in the summer of 194' that it would lead to some sort of disaster and what was the Government doing then. Why didn't every schoolboy in the counrrY get a letter from the Health Department saying, 'Warning: Women can drive You mad.' It's a bit late now. And it is little consolation to me to think that I inlet', have driven a couple of women mad in the past. There was another letter, an impertinent one, in my postbag last week, from Sheila who lives in Doncaster. She writes, 'Afro! 25 years of marriage to a boozer like you,' finally had the guts to divorce him.' That's rather rude, and she signs off with 'Keep smiling,' which is awful. What do I want to keep smiling for? To put frightened people at their ease, I suppose. It may take more muscles to frown than to smile or cough than to fart but that's the way I like it. Every morning at dawn when I wake it's cough, frown, cough, frown, and so first right up until opening time or the first rink. I asked a doctor about that once. Why do I stop coughing after I've had a couple of drinks?' I said. 'Because the alcohol anaesthetises your throat,' he told me. Other parts as well, I thought. But the way readers end letters is rather strange. After Keep Smiling I had a Bottoms Up. I don't quite know whether I ani being urged to have a drink or whether I am being given misguided medical advice. Then there was one from a girl reader of the Sporting Life who ended with, 'Yours in adulation, but slightly put because Dreadful. She is put out as she calls it eteause I wrote bad things about her favourite racehorse, Corbiere, and his .Lrralner, Jenny Pitman. I may have said that they were indistinguishable. But I don't want adulation from deepest Berkshire. I want it right here in Great Portland Street. And now the Inland Revenue don't even bother to sign off any more. I'm sure that Years ago they wished to remain my obedient servants, but now they don't give a hoot. Quite often people tell you that they are Ever Yours but I doubt that they realY are and none of my ex-wives has ever ended a Your Dinner is in the Oven note and said Yours Faithfully at the end which, lat retrospect, I would have preferred to LL°ve. The origin of Yours Sincerely is 4oMething of a mystery to me and it smacks that a con. I don't trust people who tell me that they are sincere, in the same way that You must never trust a man who tells you that he is going to be 'absolutely frank' or who Prefixes his utterance with the phrase, '0 tell you the truth . . . .' That's what You aren't getting. So why don't people lust end up by saying, 'Goodbye. Sheila, Doncaster.'? ,Anyway, apropos the letter from the old lady in Suffolk, I expect we will have more attention from the Customs & Excise e°Ple soon for we have been striking sinister bets again. The present odds for the against the first person in Soho to get they dreaded complaint, or at least where rl.,leY attend for drinks, goes, 4-5 the the Room, evens the French pub, 3-1 `,.!!e Coach and Horses, no offers for the Golden Lion. The Groucho Club isn't even quoted so pure are the customers therein. And now, just as I write to you, the Postman has delivered a letter which ends WI. tit, 'All the jolly, jolly.' Jolly what? I 4PPose that none of it can be worse than the Sporting Life reader who ends with, All the best in sport.' Anyway, as my old Mother-in-law used to say, 'I must close new.' She never did.
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