Low life
Bum rap
Jeffrey Bernard
The course of high-powered vitamin injections I am having has yet to show any improvement to my failing eyesight. It is early days still but I wish I could read the card of the riders and runners in next week's Grand National. There are more important things than a handicap steeple- chase but it still irks me. What's more my bum is getting very sore. The nurses can't find much muscle there to inject into and yesterday's jab hit my pelvic bone. It brought a tear to my eye.
After that I limped over the road to the pub opposite the hospital and it was in that pub that I waited 21 years ago for news of my daughter's arrival. At least she was good enough not to start her journey into this awful world until they had called 'last orders', so I was steeled enough not to flinch at her arrival. It was in that pub even longer ago that I suffered the embarrass- ment one day of finding myself standing next to a magistrate who had fined me £5 two hours earlier for some trivial misde- meanour. But yesterday's attempt to anaes- thetise my bruises failed. It took ten minutes to limp to Soho Square, a mere 300 yards. All this thanks to using my body as an ashtray and ullage can for years.
And so into the Coach and Horses where they are still talking about Norman's appearance on last week's Terry Wogan show. Much to my surprise his new-found fame hasn't gone to his head as I thought it would. He is as modest as he always has been, only claiming to be immortal. He also gave me a report on how the play, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, had done at the Shaftesbury Theatre last week. Although Norman is what is called an 'angel', some- body who has backed a show for fx, it still amazes me that he knows more about my business than I do. Far more. Incredible 'You're remaindered, you bastard!' really for a man so adept at getting hold of the wrong end of the stick. The other day he said, apropos Easter, 'I'm not having any bloody carol-singers in here.'
In the evening I got home to another batch of letters from listeners to Desert Island Discs. A friend had to read them out to me. The business of the wrong Mozart piano concerto being put on, rectified in the repeat, is beginning to annoy me. The castaway does not fetch the disc from the library neither does he or she operate the machine that plays it. I feel insulted that these people should think that it was I who got it wrong. Another thing that has irritat- ed me is that people have written to say that it was sad and have advised me to get in touch with God. I suppose they mean well, but I am not sad and do not feel like getting in touch with God. I don't want to be preached to by laymen or laywomen. If it did sound sad that was simply because I must have a miserable tone of voice, which I do at 10 a.m.
Also in my mail my friend found a cheque for £100 dated 14 February. It was from a company I simply cannot recall ever hearing of, but I must have done an odd job for them. What amazes me though is the thought of that being undiscovered for six weeks. Things must be looking up. In the 1970s I could have smelt that cheque, blind or not. I just wish I could see what to put it on in the National. Something Irish this year, I fancy.
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