Low life
Baby talk
Jeffrey Bernard
Whatever happened to herpes? Now that Aids is with us it barely gets a look-in. I don't feel as sorry for it as I would for a man whose obituary was spiked in favour of a bigger name on the day, but you hardly hear the word on anyone's lips these days. It is just that it occurs to me that you can date people and slot them into their generation if you know about their venereal past record, dreads and expectan- cies. When I was a lad, the boys dreaded clap and the girls were terrified of getting pregnant. Now, I am not frightened of catching anything — the chance might be a fine thing— and I haven't seen an obvious- ly pregnant woman for years. You used to see them everywhere dragging their weary feet in and out of shops but the first evidence you see of it nowadays is your actual baby itself.
I don't like babies very much. They haven't got a lot to say and their mothers will keep using them as battering rams in supermarkets. Oddly enough they are quite sensitive to atmosphere and I made one cry yesterday by giving it a dirty look. Its nose was running, it was sucking a comforter and was dressed up as a rabbit. Comforters, dummies or whatever you may like to call them, look particularly disgusting on middle-aged and elderly babies. If I had the misfortune to become a father again I would shove a cigarette into baby's mouth should it start howling be- cause of a surfeit of dirty looks.
The present daughter didn't cry much when she was a baby and I can only assume she was too daft to realise her home was breaking up and that she was having an unhappy childhood. I think she cries a bit now after her driving lessons, but she is at present beaming at the thought of steaming up the Nile with me, which is exactly what we will be doing when you read this. Last night I took her to a pub and allowed her to play with the traveller's cheques while she sipped a Pemod. Then, over a rather expensive dinner, she complained that the Pemod had spoiled the taste of the wine. It is not a good idea to spoil a daughter because of guilt feelings about years ago, but what else can you do? But I think that if I hadn't seen my father from the age of two until 17 and then he walked in some- where I was and asked, 'Same again?' I would be quite pleased.
Anyway, the dreaded Isabel looked over my shoulder a few minutes ago and said, `Oh, you're writing about Aids. It's my favourite subject.' At school?' I asked, quite astonished. 'No. On television.' She has had an appalling education and I am a little sceptical about teachers wanting more money. Well, not so much wanting more, but being able to justify more. It could be that I breathed too many Teacher's over Isabel once and she shut off. She is opening up now though and this morning I heard her come in at 4.30 a.m. She even got up before midday thanks to a telephone call from her mother — the wife I thought was Captain Oates when she left me but who made a remarkable recovery to come in from the cold — and she is at the moment watching an a.m. showing of Dallas in spite `That consignment of umbrellas has turned up at last.' of the fact that I have just advised her that the pubs are now open.
Which reminds me of another awful thing about schools today. Kids seem to know nothing about the history of their own wretched country. Isabel thinks that the Duke of Wellington is a pub. Well, it is, but would I have about 15 biographies of a pub plus a volume of the landlord's despatches from the Peninsular coach out- ing? I think the intense heat in Egypt might snap her out of this rather vague thinking. I see from the Times that it was 95°F in Cairo yesterday which means it is probably about 100°F between Luxor and Aswan. I can't wait to play the John Clements part in The Four Feathers. When I told Isabel about it her eyes glazed over slightly and I suspect she thinks that the mad Mandi and General Gordon were a pop group and a pub respectively.
But where oh where is contentment? I shall be worried out of my mind about the Headingley Test Match and I shall miss the Coral Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park on Saturday. And now Isabel has just announced that she wants to climb up a pyramid from the inside. The idea of such horrifying claustrophobia makes me feel sick and does, I think, justify just the one and first of the day.
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