Low life
Sago and spirits but no tomatoes
Jeffrey Bernard
Ihave been given clearance by a dieti- cian at the Middlesex Hospital to eat all the tapioca and sago that I can lay my hands and spoons on. Such a relief. The woman who has told me this preaches what seems to be a slightly deranged gospel of sorts, but then my kidneys are now a little deranged. I am not allowed to drink beer again, a drink which has bored me enormously for the past 30 years, but I am also not allowed to drink wine, which I have always loved with food.
But the turn-up for the books was when she told me, and she doesn't know me, that as far as spirits go I can help myself and jump in at the deep end. In all the years, no one in the medical profession has ever told me to help myself to — anything. I am not on a diet, I have simply been given a list of things I may never eat, and the list includes citrus fruit, liver, veal, mushrooms and tomatoes. A kitchen without tomatoes is almost as awful an idea as a kitchen with- out onions or olive oil. But enough. A tomato-less life must go on.
The afternoons recently have been drag- ging by more than usual as they can in the summer if you can't get out much, but a brief snap of publicity has distracted me in the past few days even though it has not cheered me up quite as much as I would have thought it might. Unused as I am to being interviewed, I have said things to my inquisitors that they have picked up and just not let go. Looking for hooks to hang their stories on, they will pick on just one aspect of one and worry it like a dog with a bone. Unfortunately, unlike a dog, they won't bury it.
Twice last week, I mentioned that I am dissatisfied with my appearance which is to put it mildly. If vanity has anything to do with caring about what I look like, then I am indeed vain, and a look into the mirror is like a punch in the face and, my God, these writers won't let me forget. Of one woman writer a friend of hers remarked to me, 'You must have charmed the boots off her. She usually does the most amazing demolition jobs.' So that interview in the Telegraph was a tremendous relief as was the little drink session provided by Channel 4 last week when they previewed tomor- row's film.
It began badly enough when the uni- formed security man told me that there was no smoking anywhere at all in the entire building. He was overruled not just by me but by Beryl Bainbridge and Alice Thomas Ellis as well and that may even have unnerved him. But yet again, and I say it after the smallest of all the shindigs I go to, never again. The business of being prisoner on a lower level than anyone else in my wheelchair is almost unbearable although I have no objection to the occasional young woman squatting on the floor in front of me.
The crush in the garden at the annual Spectator party is another physically unpleasant experience but it is good to keep in touch with some of the people who go to it. And that event will be upon us in only a few days' time. I have met some odd and interesting people in The Spectator gar- den. Last year there was a nymphomaniac in her seventies who would insist on sitting herself down on the stump of my right leg. I hope it was as much of a comfort to her as it was a fairly painful embarrassment to me. I usually go to Spectator parties vowing to be rude or at the least a little insulting to most of the well-known politicians who I am told will be there.
With various racist remarks that Enoch Powell once uttered that still rankled more than a little, I was more than a little sur- prised to find myself listening to him with open-mouthed fascination after just five minutes in his company. I wonder would I have approached him with such aggression had I known then as I do now just how much most black people I've come across hate me. I can't help my colour either, or lack of it. Norman Tebbit was another I was prepared to take the gloves off with but I was just a despicable sucker for his flattery. If Tony Blair is invited this year, I shall go just to tell him that he smiles too much for credibility.
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