Low life
Down in
the valley
Jeffrey Bernard
If I hadn't wanted to take my daughter to lunch on Christmas Day I would have stayed in bed. It was pretty awful for me but seemingly okay for a 19-year-old who only four years ago was sustained by fish fingers. We should have walked around the corner to Chinatown and had the crab and ginger and a row with one of the waiters. I usually feel like a member of that crazy institution, the Dangerous Sports Club, when I go into most Chinese restaurants apart from The Ming in Romilly Street. There is something oddly reassuring about being addressed as Jeff as opposed to the usual snapped, barked or screamed, 'What you want?' They are benign in the Ming, but in most other Chinese restaurants I am reminded of the fact that they invented gunpowder. How lucky they didn't have any nitric acid and glycerine.
Anyway, the Churchill Hotel in Portman Square could have done us a bit better. Only the starter was good. Gravadlax, and they ruined that by not turning up with the sauce until we had half finished it. The turkey was so dry it took an entire sauce- boat of gravy to swallow it. Where was the black meat? The paper-hatted party at the next table kept staring at Isabel and me. That may have been because she is so pretty, but I suspect that they thought they were gazing at a dirty old man with his bit of fluff.
After a mediocre Christmas pudding it is so easy to buy a really good one — the waitress asked me if I wanted coffee. When I told her no she said, 'It is inclusive sir.' My God. Do I look as though I couldn't buy a cup of coffee if I wanted one? I didn't
say anything because she was a Chinese waitress and I do not want to get stabbed or blown up in front of my own daughter. That will be a private happening when it comes to pass. After I had paid the bill (£80) I put Isabel in a taxi to send her home, and then Christmas simply petered out into limbo.
After that it was home to television, tea, forbidden biscuits and then vodka in the evenings in an attempt to seduce that elusive sandman. It is not a good thing to attempt to use booze as an anaesthetic at night but it can work wonders during the day when Norman is waffling about the success of the play. After about four large ones I can barely hear a word he waffles; I just sit there watching him raising his fists to the ceiling like some idiot who has just scored a goal. In his case it is usually an own goal. He only opens his mouth to change step as they say.
But since Christmas there has been a lot of yawning in this attic. If I hear, read or see any more summings up of the Eighties or predictions for the Nineties I shall cancel the papers and send the television set back to the people I rent it from. Do you really want to know what some idiot actress or stand-up comedian thinks may happen on the political front over the next ten years? It is asinine and angry making.
Nevertheless, as a man who lives in the past, if not from day to day, I must say something about the Eighties. They were good for me apart from 1987 when I had nowhere to live. That was hell, carting carrier bags around to any bed I could find. Thank God for the Chelsea Arts Club which bailed me out from time to time. Then in 1988 Keith Waterhouse said he wanted to make a play of this column and I thought he was mad. Since it appeared, life has changed a little and thanks to him, Peter O'Toole and Ned Sherrin I some- times find myself walking about with a fixed smile on my face, like babies have when they are busy farting. Peter says you can't live from peak to peak and have to learn to walk in the valleys. Thanks to those three gentlemen I can now walk in the valley without even looking over my shoulder.
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