Low life
Nudge, nudge
Jeffrey Bernard
Ileft the windows wide open last night and the rain came in on Monica. Luckily she didn't explode when I switched her on, but when I pressed her carriage return key it knocked over a glass that contained my last drop of vodka. That just about sums up everything really, doesn't it? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. I keep getting messages like that and when I went out just now to • replenish the Smirnoff I noticed that the premises next door to the off-licence are occupied by an undertaker. God seems to be quite fond of the nudge, nudge. Well, it is still raining relentlessly and I sit here staring through the tear- stained window panes wondering and then concluding that I should go to hell and not to heaven. Going to heaven would be such a wrench from all I have known.
And what, I would like to know, is happening to the prayers my friendly nun in Norfolk is offering up to get me a flat? I haven't much minded staying in this club in Chelsea for the past two weeks, but you can't get up at 3 a.m. and make yourself a cup of tea, which is what I was used to. But the garden was lovely until this rain. It still is, contemplated from the breakfast table, but the tortoise has gone into hiding. I wonder what it is like being a tortoise. You couldn't be frivolous or facetious, could you? I doubt you could meet a deadline either. On the other hand, you wouldn't have to look for somewhere to live. I got a post card just now from a very nice woman who has been staying here and she says she misses my 'suffering' face over the break- fast table. At least it's good to know that one makes others feel better. The trouble is, you know that you are in the final furlong when Norman shows sign of con- cern. When a publican takes you aside to ask 'Are you all right?' then you know he is living in fear of his till.
Yes, it has been a rather odd fortnight living in a club. This morning, at the communal breakfast table, a man stood next to me and spent five minutes — a bloody long time — opening a packet of cornflakes. It was deafening and in consid- eration of other people who don't like noise I have given up putting my teacup on a saucer. The older you get the more you dislike noise and they have more or less ruined the Queen's Elm by installing three fruit machines. But the other noise at the breakfast table I don't like is my smoker's cough. It is not only nasty, it is embarras- sing. Norman's laugh is zoological and the sound of women crying is hell.
I feel rather sorry for women; they go mad so easily. There is a complete nutter who approached me in the Coach some time ago because she reads the Spectator and she somehow got herself in the Groucho Club yesterday. I was sitting by the piano listening to the excellent Barney Bates playing some Fats Waller and she came over and tried to insist that Barney should play 'Jesus Wants Me For a Sun- beam'. She herself could have been a moonbeam and the poor girl has suicide written over her face. I won't go into what ways she is a bit mad, but I often wonder how such people get by. I mean in practical terms. How do they get the money to eat or get from A to B? What do the unem- ployable, not unemployed, actually do? Perhaps nothing touches them. Maybe horrifically everything does. Dear God, one is so very lucky.
It is opening time, cooks all over London are toiling in their kitchens and I have just received a cheque from my bookmaker. Come on with the rain. My legs have become so thin that they can no longer support eczema. Best of all, the stars predict a change of profession for Geminis next week. My very own bank? But not quite yet a sunbeam.
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