Low life
Mind my feet
Jeffrey Bernard
There was always going to be a back- lash and I knew that from the moment I read the review of the play after the first night at the Apollo Theatre. What I didn't realise was where most of the backlash would be coming from and just how severe some of the lashes would be. On the open- ing night of the play in Dublin three weeks ago a friend of mine witnessed Keith Waterhouse telling members of the Irish press that I wouldn't be there because I had been drinking too much. In fact, I had been taken by ambulance to the Middlesex Hospital with a viral infection — gastro- enteritis. I got flu on top of that, and felt as ill as I had ever felt in my entire life. Then I had a message the following day from Dublin quoting the theatre critic of the Irish Times. It is a pity that the man, David Nolan doesn't stick to his job — theatre criticism. Apparently he did a character assassination on me saying that I am shal- low, egotistical and that I only pretend to like classical music. Other people from Ire- land telephoned me to tell me to take no notice of Mr Nolan since he is a little prig and a teetotaller.
The week before, the Sunday Times, in an article about Waterhouse, referred to me as 'the Fleet Street soak'. A soak has reached saturation point and is totally inca- pable of running his or her day-to-day exis- tence. Not a well-thought-out word, but, as I say, colleagues over the past five years have had very little to write about and I suppose what really annoys them and also acquaintances thinly disguised as friends, is the fact that I haven't been given what they would consider to be my just desserts. Not every dog is entitled to his day. But they must surely draw a little comfort to know that I am helpless, flat on my back and lying here with bandaged feet so badly blis- tered — dangerous for a diabetic — that they won't stop bleeding and prevent me from staggering out of this bedroom to be rude to a few of them in the Groucho Club.
The play, for me, now has a distinctly sour flavour, and lying in bed all day could be just about bearable if it was possible to get comfortable. It is not possible. I need one of those complicated electrically manipulated beds that cost something like £1,000,000. Another source of irritation is the fact that I have not had any solid food for nearly two weeks. The older I have got in recent years the more obsessed I have
become with good food and I lie here dreaming of the recipes in the cook books on my window-sill.
Those dreams are going slightly down market and I no longer include dishes like lobster thermidor in them, but long for the meal that all cafés used to serve when I was navvying on building sites 40 years ago. In those days, before the workman's café was taken over by armies of men with frying pans and revolting fat, my favourite was roast lamb, mashed potatoes and cabbage. That was always about 2s 3d. Had I been in Dublin three weeks ago, I would have had my favourite pub lunch in the Old Strand, which comprised ham, parsley sauce and cabbage.
I have kept my head above water or at least above my blankets with tea and milk- shakes. Such trivia becomes of great impor- tance when one is an invalid and incapable. I feel like a leaking waterbed and the doc- tor has just been. I much prefer the present bedside chat to the banal niceties of yesteryear. I prefer the truth. She looked at my foot as the nurse was dressing it and said, 'My God, it looks awful. It is oozing puss all the time'. She wants me to go back to the hospital where nowadays you can wait on a stretcher for anything between six and ten hours in a side-room in the casual- ty department. I would rather Mr Cobb, the sculptor in Titanium, came up to this flat and took the wretched foot away with him, preserved it in formaldehyde and put it on display somewhere in the Canary Wharf complex. It could serve as a warning to journalists thinking that the long run, the paper-chase, to the grave is a smooth athletic trip. And to think that the boss of my sign is Mercury the winged, heeled mes- senger of the Gods. Some mistake here. There has been a mix up with one of Achilles' heels.
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