Low life
Tequila time
Jeffrey Bernard
depressed sitting here, looking out at the rain and waiting for the Social Services to deliver my wheelchair. When it comes, I shall call it Rosebud. I have been trying to resist a wheelchair, but now I have had to give in. Crutches slip in the rain and I feel at risk when I stagger out.
And speaking of risk, I suppose 1 shall have to have a bet on the Grand National this Saturday. I issue you with my annual warning so that you don't find yourself going along with a regular faller. I shall most likely back Laura's Beau and have what may be a saver on Captain Dibble. I don't really know why I bother. The race no longer holds much magic for me and I prefer to keep my ammunition dry for the flat.
So a drink with Keith and three other old colleagues, and lunch with Taki in San Lorenzo, saved me from screaming in an otherwise awful week, held captive in this flat unless someone is here to put me in a taxi. Vera's thrice-weekly visits have become a treat. She is washing up at the moment and the noise of her doing so is sweet music. What I do find irritating, though, is that she will spend my money on things like bleach, Fairy Liquid and Flash. I have tried to explain to her that money is for self-indulgences but she actually enjoys her work.She is a miracle minder. She even mixes me a drink when she thinks it is `opening time', and I wonder what I did before the home help people sent her to me — lived in even more squalor, I sup- pose. She has just said, 'Well, I'll have a couple of bob on Laura's Beau if you've done a post-mortem on it.'
Post-mortem could be quite the right word. When you brood about the future as much as I do, you can sometimes see it in what seems like retrospect when you wake in the middle of the night. Last night I was awake nearly all night. 1 poured myself a large one, hoping it would knock me out, switched on Classic FM and, lo and behold, there was that bloody, wretched Carmen Woman again. On looks, I would say, Vera could have played Carmen a few years ago.
And now, talking of the National to Vera, I have just realised that it is going to be very difficult for me to ever go racing again. The trainer, Edward Courage, was stuck in a wheelchair for most of his days and, more recently, the excellent Major Dick Hem was, but I can't see myself watching the early morning gallops glued to one. But I think a visit to Peter Walwyn and/or Richard Hannon's establishments is called for, for the sweet sounds of the thun- dering hooves and the skylarks on a spring morning. Not even Classic FM could over- play that sound-track.
All I can hear now, apart from Vera slav- ing away, are the pneumatic drills of the Gas Board. And I don't even have gas. Try simmering something on an electric stove. You can't. And I am boiling over, just trapped here in my new sofa not paid for by Mexican theatre-goers.
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