Low life
Last resort
Jeffrey Bernard
We were idly wondering what on earth Watneys will do to the French pub When Gaston Barlemont retires. Piped ac- cordion muzak a. la Maigret? Barmaids with red, white and blue aprons and caps? Fitted carpets? God save us, In no time at all there will be nowhere to go and what's more I read in the Telegraph that the sun will snuff out in 5,000 million years' time. I give Soho about another five years and I have a very ,t1t1comfortab1e feeling that I might survive It, The trouble is that there aren't many worthwhile villages left in London. I used to have a fondness for Marylebone High
Street when I lived there but it's far too bland and benign. Chelsea seems to consist of nothing but shops which sell jeans, peo- ple too young to talk to and failed faces too embarrassing to look into. I haven't got the socialist wardrobe obligatory for drinking in Hampstead — woollen tie, corduroy trousers and tweed jacket — and the fact that I was born in the wretched place, had my first experience of sex on the Heath and my first liver biopsy in the Royal Free doesn't justify loitering in the Flask watch- ing people pay homage to John Hurt, who was a nice chap before he became a naked civil elephant man.
Fleet Street you can keep. I've had enough dealings with solicitors not to want to drink with them in El Vino and, weighed down as I am by a quantity of chips on the shoulder and an innate bitterness, neither do I want to talk shop with hacks who earn £20,000 a year for putting in an appearance to write 300 words a week. There was a time, would you believe, when Notting Hill Gate swung a little. I had a fight with Roy Campbell in a pub there on my 18th birth- day and nearly every day was a party day When the Roberts, Colquhoun and McBryde, had a studio in Bedford Gardens. George Barker also livened things up and John Minton subsidised the drinks to a cer- tain extent. Later, in the Sixties, the vision of Sally Vincent must have depressed the female populace of Notting Hill.
The place I can see making something of a comeback is north of Soho, its old an- nexe, Charlotte Street. Unpolluted by sex shops, dirty bookshops and strip clubs it still has a certain charm. The fact that the denizens of the Duke of York, the 'Wheat- sheaf, the Black Horse and the Fitzroy are mostly dead doesn't mean it couldn't be re- populated. I can also see Islington gaining in popularity although there are far too many people living there with tenuous con- nections and pretensions to the 'arts'. A lot of people in Islington have been hinting at potential talent for at least 50 years. Most of them end up as rip-off antique dealers feigning an understanding of culture which in reality is materialised by a discussion about nuclear disarmament at a wine and cheese party and by their revolting children.
In spite of being a Londoner the City re- mains a mystery to me. But there must be some good men there. Britain is Great Bri- tain because the majority of the people who run the Stock Exchange, like those who hold the reins in the House of Commons, are permanently drunk. So I presume there must be a few good dives there although I only know Sweetings and a revolting pub opposite Liverpool Street Station packed with lager-swilling travelling salesmen. Women do seem scarce in the City though, I suppose they must be manning the typewriters most of the time. Women are very important to a village and if saying so gives offence it is only because I am unlucky enough to be a male heterosexual. This has caused a lot of interference to the smooth running of my life, nevertheless [like to see the odd sex object over the rim of my glass. And that's one reason for not drinking in the village of Mayfair or in the Grays Inn Road, where only very important people from the Times and Guardian drink.
No, when Soho dies it might even mean moving out of London altogether. But where to? I could never live in a village pro- per again because of the necessity of driv- ing. Brighton, Bristol and Cambridge have occurred to me as possibilities and although I gather from my colleague Michael Heath that Brighton is almost 100 per cent homosexual it does have a school of jour- nalism which might be useful and possibly lead to a job on the Sun. We can all dream.
• Meanwhile I sit by the bedside of dying Soho holding her hand but wondering wouldn't it be kinder to switch off the life support system. When the likes of my brothers, Tom Baker, and Conan Nicholas who gave the world cat racing stop frequen- ting Soho then it will be time to charter that bus which is going to drive us over Beachy Head. Book your seat now. There's Only room for 52.
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