Low life
. . . to get a free dinner
Jeffrey Bernard
Isuppose it's obligatory to write some guff on the subject of Christmas, how awful and wonderful 1987 was, and what one can hope for in 1988. As I write to you it is the shortest day of the year and I am overcome by angst and remorse. Well, not quite overcome but certainly down for a count of eight.
Later this morning I have to go and collect a goose I ordered, also the ingre- dients for the stuffing and a hundred other things. Fun at any other time of the year and I should have booked into a good hotel, but I didn't want to be surrounded by Arabs drinking Evian water as I was six years ago in the Park Lane Hilton. What a jaunt that was, with the only consolation being able to look out of the window and see Byron sitting on his plinth.
But I like the peace of Christmas Day itself. It's the lead-up office parties, the ghastly crowds of part-time drinkers and the fact of not being able to get a table in any of the restaurants I use because of the advertising people who take them over. I don't mind seeing secretaries throwing up after their advocaat, blackcurrant juice and Pernod because I'm not squeamish but I hate it when they cry. They tend to get pregnant too this week if they haven't got a mum and dad to go home to.
And I wonder where my daughter has got to. I heard to my horror the other day that she is to be seen in the evenings in a perfectly horrid Soho pub called The Spice of Life. I went there to investigate and it was packed with young people. Ugh.
Anyway, I didn't think much of 1987. It had its purple patches — taking Isabel down the Nile, Kenya, a splendid weekend in Paris for the Arc de Triomphe, another good day at Epsom for the Derby on the Groucho Club coach and the book launch at Lingfield Park — but I feel as though I have been marking time in glue. The trouble is that I bore myself. When even a self-obsessed man is made to yawn by his own day-dreams then there's nowhere to go.
But let us look forward to 1988 and another 52 weeks on the treadmill. We are due for a good summer. We usually are. I already long for that first day of sun and warmth when you can walk about without a jacket, when the pub doors are left wide open and when you can eat outside. The next three months are to be avoided. There are no fires in hell. Hell is winter in London for eternity. Only between the start of the flat racing season and the hurricane season is the weather bearable.
Of course, there is really nothing to moan about at all. Moods and angst are most likely chemically induced, as is the insomnia that helps to bring it all on.
But here we are midst Christmas and I can remember a remarkable one in Eagt Anglia at a place that was, at the time, considered to be one of the best res- taurants in England. If I remember cor- rectly, it was called the Fox and Goose in a place called Fressingfield. The odd thing about it, terrific as it was, was the business of the guvnor really loathing bad language as much as he did. One day a man was presented with his bill, looked at it and then said, `F— me.' The boss-man leapt at him, tore up the bill and chucked him out. The legend spread and the guvnor had an awful time with a procession of people eating and drinking their way through expensive meals and all saying 'F—ing hell' when presented with the to-be-torn- up bill.
So, Happy Christmas I hope you had, and a prosperous New Year to those of you who have a healthy contempt for money.
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