Low life
Out to lunch
Jeffrey Bernard
What a rare exception to all that then was the Oldie of the Year lunch at Simp- sons in the Strand last week. It was a plea- sure to be seated between Beryl Bainbridge and Jennifer Paterson. Sadly Sue Townsend was at another table and Aina Haycraft (Alice Thomas Ellis) is hard to drag out of her home. Ken Livingstone was across the table and so was Miles Kington. Even the steak and kidney pudding was good.
One of the very other good lunch parties I remember was given by the Sunday Express for their Book of the Year Award. Rose Tremaine won it that year with Restoration. I sat next to Laurie Lee who quite unashamedly stuffed the leftover lamb cutlets in his jacket pocket without bothering to wrap them in a serviette. Which reminds me. I seem to remember a letter in these pages not long ago on the subject of whether it is right to use the `Come on, junior, Daddy'll get angry if you don't play with your food.' word serviette or napkin. In my book a serviette is made of paper and a napkin of linen. Two different things. I wonder what Laurie Lee's pocket would have thought of a naked steak and kidney pudding.
Just about the only other thing to have aroused my interest last week was a letter received from a man I sat next to in class at Pangbourne 45 years ago. In it he writes, remember well your fierce temper which tended to flare up whenever you were chal- lenged by authority. I must say when you left there was a sense of loss in the class, as few of us liked the authoritarian discipline and you simply expressed forcefully what many of us felt.' I'm damned if I can remember that and thought I was a shy, retiring mouse. After I read the letter I telephoned the man and arranged to have a drink with him when he is next in Lon- don.
It was only a few days before making contact with him again that a present mas- ter at Pangbourne recognised me from a magazine picture and approached me to ask if I would go down to the old school and talk to the sixth form boys. I said I would because I am curious to see now the place I loathed. My old classmate advised me to take a hip flask. As if I needed telling. Would that I had had one in 1947. Anyway, when we meet up again we must go and hunt down the writer Beverley Cross who caned us both for reading novels in prep. I would like to meet Mrs Cross too, better known to you as Maggie Smith. A pity she wasn't at Pangbourne.
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