Low life
Thin walls
Jeffrey Bernard
This person then goes to the kitchen and puts the kettle on for tea. It would be an exaggeration to say that I could hear how many teaspoons of tea are put in the pot but, having read Sherlock Holmes for my PhD thesis, I can assure you that there is not much that goes on upstairs which can be kept secret from me. I have tried blotting out the piddling noise by turning up the shipping forecast to full blast on Radio 4 but I do not think the onus should be on me. What did occur to me this morning was that I should push a note under the door suggesting that this person buy a cat litter tray or a quantity of blotting paper. But then, in the even of a cat litter tray, I suppose I would be subjected to the noise of scratching. But sounds and noises penetrate in a downward direction and less of an upward one, so I wonder what the woman who lives in the basement can deduce from the noises I make. Not a lot.
The all too occasional noise of this typewriter at work? But pouring a drink is as silent as pouring oil. I suppose the noise of the electric juice squeezer indicates how many drinks I have had, since it is one orange per vodka, but it is doubtful that she can hear my brain seething. For me, it is a deafening noise. Anyway, considering I am so aware of these trivial things — the upstairs peeing person was half an hour late for work this morning — you can see that my life is rather thin, not to say almost empty. All the more reason to wonder that the nice Austrian woman, Renate, should have picked on me as the subject of her PhD thesis. At least she has got something out of it already in the way of a jolly little trip I believe she enjoyed.
The Mail on Sunday flew her over from Vienna the other day so that they could interview and photograph the two of us together in the Coach and Horses. (What an awful picture of me: Dorian Gray in reverse.) But, if she can get a PhD writing about a man who listens either to 'Pennies from Heaven' or 'Raindrops are Falling every morning and then pours oil on his troubled waters before phoning for a mini- cab to the West End for a few drinks and to shamble aimlessly about until the evening. then good luck to her.
If she gets this PhD I shall fly to Vienna and we shall have a splendid lunch party. I have never been to Austria and the only thing I dread is a surfeit of Strauss waltzes. I am sure they seep from every wall. Better, maybe, to listen to the urinating at the crack of dawn in horrible Hampstead. Incidentally, I have been wondering why Anthony Burgess will insist on using the word `micturate'. I conclude that he is an English language swank. Whether it is correct or not is neither here nor there. What's wrong with piss?
Meanwhile, I await with no little anti- cipation the noise of the first fart of winter from upstairs. When I do hear it, I shall write a letter to the Times on the lines of `on hearing the first cuckoo of spring'.
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