Low life
Toes and roses
Jeffrey Bernard
My doctor sent a chiropodist round to my flat yesterday to amputate my toenails. In case you don't know it I should tell you that diabetics have to be very careful about their feet because of the danger of gan- grene. A small cut could just be disaster.
The chiropodist was a young man and very hygienic. He performed his task wear- ing latex gloves and went to some trouble to clean his slippers very thoroughly too. After he had been clipping away for a cou- ple of minutes I asked him, 'What on earth made you decide to do this for a living?' He said, 'Oh, I just drifted into it.' I thought about that. How do you 'drift' into being a chiropodist? Do people drift into being bank robbers, brain surgeons or dic- tators?
He went on to tell me that many old peo- ple have very thick toenails as hard as iron. Then he surprised me by saying that I had nice feet. I thought that a little odd. No doctor has ever complimented me on any part of my body except to grudgingly imply that my liver is in remarkably good nick considering its workload over the years. So now I have nice feet and I have that offi- cially. Maybe that young man is a foot fetishist. After he left I kept glancing at my feet and I suppose they will be something to look at now that I can no longer bear to look at my face.
Then there came another knock on my door and I opened it to a man who had come to deliver a single red rose in a small Chinese vase. There was a note with the vase and rose written on a strip of a torn menu and it said, 'From your secret admir- er', and it was signed either E or C. I am puzzled by it. Why does E or C wish to keep her identity a secret? And how did she know my address? Perhaps the chi- ropodist had dashed out to the market and bought the rose and the vase after being overwhelmed by the beauty of my feet. If so I shall never wear socks or shoes again. Oh dear. And I have always wanted to be loved for my money. Perhaps I shall ask my good doctor to send round a manicurist so that I may be loved for all my extremities if not excesses.
But before the afternoon of the toes and rose there had nearly been a nasty scene in a pub. I had to leave before it became real- ly heavy. A stranger turned to me and said that the two boys alleged to have abducted and then murdered the two-year-old James Bulger should be put up against a wall and shot and that furthermore he would like to do the shooting. He meant it. He looked a little unbalanced and he kept pulling an imaginary trigger with his index finger. I said that I didn't think it was a particularly good idea to shoot children. He wouldn't stop and he gave me a list of what other offences committed by children should be dealt with by a firing squad. Before the urge to hit him over the head with my stick became too strong and before he could change his mind and tell me that shooting was too good for today's kids, I walked out.
I really resent being driven away from an oasis by mad and boring strangers. In bygone days most pub fights were the end result of arguments on the subjects of poli- tics and religion. I don't get into those scraps any more. But I did have something of a row in the Coach and Horses on Mon- day when the third Test Match against India was concluded. Somebody came out with a silly racist remark. These squabbles are invariably over sport and the Coach and Horses attracts very few academics. There was once, though, a regular who thought he was a scholar and I was tempt- ed to whack him after a lecture he deliv- ered in which he claimed that D.H. Lawrence was the greatest novelist of the 20th century. I would rather listen to Nor- man talking codswallop about cricket.
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