Low life
. . . exit lines, Jeff?
Jeffrey Bernard
It was Ascot last week and now it's Longchamps tomorrow for the Arc de Triomphe. Far too much champagne for my liking and so next year I might go off to Russia for their Derby if they have an equivalent. I gather their racing is rather emotional. The police once arrested a losing punter who jumped over the rails to kick a horse and its jockey who had fallen at the last fence in a steeplechase.
Anyway, it is all very hectic at the moment. Between the marquees on the lawns at Ascot and the suites at Long- champs I have been arranging a trip to Kenya to stay where Karen Blixen once lived. I just don't know how I fit it all in. Take this morning. In an hour's time I have a fitting at my tailor's, then I have to drink some Dutch courage before giving an address at a memorial service for Pip Piper, then drinks with a publisher before going on to lunch at the Groucho Club with Miss X. No wonder I'm knackered by sunset. (Not a bad title for a book, Knackered by Sunset, is it?) But I think I'll have to have just the one now because these little addresses in St Paul's, Covent Garden, make me extreme- ly nervous. It isn't the business of standing up in front of a lot of people you know and talking, it is knowing what to talk about. What on earth do you say about a man who was quite simply a decent, nice chap? Anyone can talk about a shit. In a strange way our old friend Pip didn't have enough pegs to hang many words on. I have been thinking of malingering and indeed I have been genuinely poisoned by a lobster this week, but it wouldn't do to let Pip's family down.
This will be the fifth time I have had to go through this ritual and I can tell you the audiences are getting thinner all the time. Muriel Belcher's memorial service was the biggest box office success I have ever seen but she has obviously opened up another club in the sky and it is my guess that it will soon be oversubscribed. Oh dear. I talked rubbish at Elizabeth Smart's memorial and I'll just have to have another. God Almigh- ty, now I've run out of soda.
At least there are no such animals as memorial address critics. Can you imagine the reviews? Dying is a sticky business. An odd thing — and I don't believe them when they say it — most of my friends claim to want to have solitary funerals and then be scattered to the winds. Not me. Living as I do, in great fear and trembling for my life, I want to be remembered. Pathetic, isn't it? I would like my coffin to be taken down Whitehall on a gun carriage preceded by the massed pipe bands of the Highland Regiments playing a dirge and followed discreetly by members of the royal family and Norman and then to be laid to rest in Westminster Abbey during a performance of Verdi's Requiem.
It's weddings that should be kept quiet, even secret. Mind you, I find them strange- ly moving. A few days ago I was standing by some traffic lights where a Rolls-Royce had had to stop. In the back there sat a handsome, urbane-looking man, silver hair, buttonhole and all the trimmings of being in control, and beside him sat his daughter in her wedding dress. She looked delightful. Like white roses. Well, it very nearly brought tears to my eyes. Why is that? You wouldn't feel too sentimental at seeing two bullocks being driven off to an abattoir, would you? I don't trust senti- ment.
But enough. It is time to go to St Paul's, pausing on the way at the White Swan. It is just all very, very embarrassing and it probably isn't all that nice for Pip either.
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