Low life
Titbits
Jeffrey Bernard
T don't know why, but recently I've been I wondering what on earth it must feel like to be a guide dog. I don't much like dogs but I do love labradors. They're the only dogs that are kind, soppy, forgiving and kind to children,. I'd willingly guide a blind labrador. I had one once — a bitch — I called Smedley and she was pretty extra- ordinary. One day — during a period when I was desperately skint — she ate an entire weekend's shopping when my back was turned. A shoulder of lamb, some chops, `We found this cowboy builder to do the extension.'
six herrings, the lot — you name it. I kicked hell out of her and she merely retreated to a corner and gazed at me with adoration, wagging her tail ever so tentatively and slowly. You could half kill a dog like that and it'd still love you.
But what of fish? I'm thinking of getting a fish tank and stuffing its waters with in- scrutable, flat, slow-thinking things from the oriental deep. If my abode were bigger I'd get a soothing hippopotamus. Looking at them, like looking at Denis Healey, Cle- ment Freud and Kenneth Muir, one is assured that, in spite of being up to here in shit, there's really no hurry. Another fancy of mine is for a bird cage. A budgie like Bernard Levin, a vulture like Enoch Powell and a canary like Mrs Thatcher. And what of ferrets like Peter Shore? Put him down a hole and he'd come up with next Sunday's lunch. Then of course there's the taxidermist-defying Cyril Smith. Badger from The Wind in the Willows? Not half nice enough. Moby Dick? Too pale. Shirley Williams? A poodle.
This, of course, brings me to just how you'd cook people given your Andes-air- crash-and-subsequent-starvation situation. The recipe isn't the only problem, there's also the matter of where and what part of the anatomy you'd start at. Malcolm Mug- geridge is a very slender shish kebab whereas his disciple, Richard Ingrams, the black and white man of television, is simply a piece of burned toast. Martin Amis and Claire Tomalin are olives. Our old friend Alan Watkins, boiled beef and carrots.
And what of closer to home? What of that silly game of naming all sorts of things whereby your companion has to guess who the hell you're referring to? In all honesty, picking myself, I find it a real putdown. I know I'm shepherd's pie, a second-hand paperback, a pair of grey flannel trousers, a 1950 Austin Cambridge, a two-mile han- dicap hurdler, a Kleenex, a paper-clip, an unsharpened pencil (HB2), and an un- solicited advertisement shoved through and up my own letterbox, but at least I'm a large vodka, lime, ice and soda and deserve grilling, marinating and serving hot.
And what about our dear contributors? How on earth do you prepare, cook and serve the likes of Bran Waugh, a man who suffers fools less gladly than anyone I know. I think he'd have to be garnished with capers whereas Ingrams should be pickled. Our editor should be covered in a benign cream sauce and the readers who send letters flambeed. And as for Taki, what about deep fried and served on a bed of lettuce in the Chicago sense of the word lettuce — circa 1928?
Ladies, of course, may be slightly more nourishing. A shoulder of Antonia Fraser. Spare ribs of Jill Tweedie. Should the granaries of the world run out, get blown up or go bad, we've always got each other. Meanwhile, I lick my lips and heave in the contemplation of the passable feast involv- ing Loren and Wedgwood Benn. May my plane never crash • in the Andes or anywhere.
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