Low life
Cat and mouse
Jeffrey Bernard
The disgusting little cameos of life today that I glimpse with more and more frequency are merging to make a vast and revolting canvas. I have thought a lot about running away recently but even in a jungle or desert I know I would bump into a football supporter, trip over a dustbin liner and hear loud piped music. People stink.
Last Sunday in Chapel Street Market I popped into a pub to refuel and had to leave at once. The decibels of the juke- box, the smell of sweat and general filth was too much. Then, outside the pub, half a dozen or so young men wearing Arsenal scarves and sweat-shirts who saw me go into the pub started jeering at me. Their
obscene enquiries as to whether the pub wasn't good enough for me and hadn't I got enough money to buy a drink have filled me with gloom ever since. It isn't pleasant to be sneered at and shouted at by Yobs. It is irritating when people are stupid but horrific when they are mindless. I don't know what the world is coming to. Well, yes I do, but I wish it would get on with it.
And now the Government and medical profession are urging us to avoid heart attacks if we possibly can. Why? Are we all supposed to be run over by buses or jump off Beachy Head? The yobs I encountered in the market should be encouraged to soak up cholesterol. Their fry-ups and lager should be subsidised. But no. The Government now want to ban death and death is too good for some people. They think that, like smoking, it's bad for you.
But to be fair to this lousy life it has not been quite all gloom. Fair weather and friends alleviate the despondency I feel when I think of the decline and fall of God's empire. Even so there are always minor irritations. Take the service and the bar staff in the Coach and Horses. I have been deer-stalking in Scotland and have walked to within five paces of a gazelle by Lake Victoria but never have I come across so shy a species of animal as the ones Norman employs. When you are in urgent need of a drink they catch your scent and stampede into the kitchen or down to the cellar. They also, like a herd grazing, all take their lunch breaks at the same time.
The other annoying thing is I have spent all the money I have collected for the Groucho Club Derby Day outing. We might all have to hitch-hike to Pontefract races instead on that day. The Derby coach Is now fully subscribed, which means that International Distillers & Vintners Ltd plus a few ethnic restaurants in and around Soho are better off by quite a lot of loot that was supposed to have passed through my hands and not fallen out of them. Yes, the current obsession with ethnic food is something of a mystery to me. Perhaps it started when I was in Thailand. But I think Your body tells you what it wants. Thank God I am entirely in accord with mine. It always wants tea and toast as I do at the crack of dawn and then it always gives me an alarm call at 11 a.m. Well, not exactly an alarm call, but certainly a cry for help.
So, what else is new? Not a lot, although She who would once iron 14 shirts at a standing — She has cut it down but has removed the marmalade from my duvet cover — gave me a splendid lunch on Sunday after the scene with the yobs in the market. Steeped in curry, satay and noo- dles as I have been I had quite forgotten the delight of bread and butter pudding made with cream and then smothered in it. So why can't you get English food in London except in somewhere that's too expensive for daily use, like the Con- naught? Food, food. I shovel it in but am nearly down to the bantamweight limit of 8st 6lbs. Norman gave me a piece of cheddar cheese yesterday, presumably in the hope it would sustain me until it was time to write out another cheque, or perhaps he unconsciously considers himself to be cat and me mouse, but you can't live on morsels.
So now I think it is time to take off to the Gay Hussar only pausing on the way at the Coach to pick up the latest writ and frighten the staff. It's awful to have to actually go hunting for a drink.
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