Low life
London from my wheelchair
Jeffrey Bernard
Taki came to see me last week and brought with him a beautiful roll of sirloin of beef and the Marchioness of Bristol. I am still ploughing my way through the beef and what Taki is doing with the Mar- chioness I leave you to work out for your- selves. The day before, I was visited by the Duchess and am now wondering for the umpteenth time why this column is called `Low Life'. The day before the Duchess called, I was taken to a restaurant in Old Burlington Street called 'Legends'.
The young woman who took me actually lifted me out of the taxi. She does indeed look like a Scandinavian athlete on steroids. I can highly recommend Legends who make, among other things, a kedgeree that is even better than the last one I had at the Connaught. It is such a simple thing to make and yet people usually mess it up by putting the wrong amount of cream into it. Then, on Sunday, I was taken to the Chelsea Arts Club for lunch. What a pleas- ant place that club becomes at this time of the year, just a little too cold to sit in the garden but the sight of a garden after living between tower blocks and hospitals is like a breath of fresh air especially during Happy Hours. It seems to me to have precious lit- tle now to do with the Arts. When I first went there many years ago they only let me In because my father was at one time a well respected member, but now the most use- ful qualification you have is the money for the annual subscription. I stopped playing snooker there when my eyes began to fail and miss it now. The last game I played there was when the club carp in the garden pond ate my plastic, clockwork frog. Those were the days when one of the girls who worked in the Groucho Club used to buy me toys from Hamley's to play with in my bath.
Another memory of the Chelsea Arts was the up-market young man who worked there in reception whom I discovered one day to be reading Nietzche in the original German. Coutts bank in the Strand, inci- dentally, had a doorman who used to do the Times crossword every morning. There is nothing to say that a doorman or a receptionist should be as thick as two Planks but it is vaguely alarming, for some reason, if they are not.
Anyway, this morning I woke up with a start and started to get up at 6 a.m. in order to get to Heathrow on time to catch my flight to Barbados. That is how vivid my dreams have become. I was terribly disap- pointed as it dawned on me slowly that today was just another grey, windy day in Berwick Street. But it makes a change from having the usual nightmares, the worst of which can depress and haunt me for days. I suppose I had had Barbados on my mind a little since the Test Matches against the West Indies began. The series will cost me and I don't care. What I do care about is that England should become a better and better side.
The last time I saw Peter O'Toole he had it right when he criticised Atherton's obses- sion with having a young team. There is no such thing as having to be a young player or an old one; all that matters is that the player should have the class to play at Test Match level. But if I had gone to Barbados this morning it is unlikely that this cricket fan would have watched the Test Match at Bridgetown. When in Barbados I do as the Bajuns do — Sweet Fanny Adams. The last time I was there I was too lazy to leave the beach and my drink to go in for a siesta. That resulted in a touch of sunstroke, but Barbados is full of compensations.
When I was carried to my room the hotel manageress who looked like a black Cyd Charisse spent the rest of the day sponging my skeletal body with cold water. I wouldn't say that another sight of her would be worth the £600 for the return ticket, but if I did see her again I would probably be persuaded to grow another leg. But closer to reality, Taki tells me that he can fix me up with a hotel on Mykonos. I know the place is crawling with homosexu- als but unlike the 1950s, I shall be delight- ed with their lack of interest. Why are these people called 'gay'? They are, as my friend Pickles says, 'flopsies' as in 'Flopsy Bunnies'. The word seems more appropri- ate.
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