Low life
Out to lunch
Jeffrey Bernard Ispent last weekend in Scotland at a perfectly splendid three-day house party or, to put it accurately, a castle party. My wrenched ankle kept me off the grouse moors but I did manage to dispatch a couple of clay pigeons. There was a fantas- tic firework display put on by professionals and there were two Highland pipers. There was salmon and champagne and the only thing that jarred slightly was a man saying that he thought I was 'hard work'. Well of course I'm hard work before opening time and you shouldn't expect much change out of a man before 11 a.m. But it's very pretty Scotland isn't it? What I must do in future though — if I do have any future in castles and formal gardens — is to resist and curb the habit of gravitating to the servants' quarters and passing the time of day in the kitchens. It isn't inverted snobbery and I rather suspect I might have had an amazing sexual experience when a boy, behind a green baize door. In the end only a fool could prefer downstairs to upstairs. And I have a fool right here now sitting behind me. Draped in her Greenham Common garb and looking like a walking jumble sale she has drawn herself up to her full majestic height and declared that it is `disgusting' that I should have spent a weekend in a castle. If I had cried off going to Scotland it wouldn't have erased world poverty or eased the tension between East and West but She who would raze castles to the ground doesn't comprehend.
But what a dreadful journey home on the train. British Rail stung three of us for £45 for lunch. The vegetables were tinned and tasteless and my steak was curled in a way that reminded me of one of Charlie Chaplin's shoes. How a so-called food expert like Prue Leith can be officially connected with British Rail is rather odd and can't do her restaurant much good. Norman should be put in charge of the catering. I've had better meals of the nursery variety in the Coach and Horses than I have had on trains although my friend Charlie says the food in Wands- worth Prison is even better. Perhaps he and Taki will one day honour us with an Egon-Ronay-type guide to food in the nick. I shall do the same for the great British hospital lunch. And talking of food reminds me of a strange story I heard from a fellow guest in Scotland. She told me that during the war she was in an air raid shelter in a blitz when she stopped an old lady from leaving it. She asked, 'Where do you think you're going to?' The old lady said, `I've left my false teeth at home and I'm going to get them.' She was told, 'Come back, they're dropping bombs, not sand- wiches.'
But more seriously, back in London I find that Robert Maxwell is about to halve my wretched income. Could this be the end? Can you get Supplementary Benefit if you weekend in castles and daily in sa- loons? I doubt it although I think it's wrong. As I think I've mentioned before, Tom Baker has the solution. He says doctors should be permitted to write you out prescriptions for money. But She says, `You are a rat to think like that.' She would have us in sackcloth and ashes and She says that come the revolution She will make sure that if I am not to be shot I will certainly end up working in the Cherry Blossom boot polish factory. Such anger. But isn't it odd that these people never refuse a dinner?
Previous page
