STUART REID
If my passport had not gone missing just before Christmas, I would have been in New York this week for the funeral of my brother-in-law William Patrick Bruton. He died of cancer that had spread from his lungs to his liver and bone marrow. He was 57, and had been in hospital for less than a fortnight, sharing a room with an Irishman called Patrick from Golders Green. For the past quarter of a century and more — ever since leaving the Jesuit novitiate after having a massive nervous breakdown — Billy had lived with manic depression, schizophrenia and poverty. His general wellbeing was not improved by congenital asthma and an addiction to untipped Pall Mall cigarettes. He lived in a tiny apartment above a liquor store on West 21st Street. There were cockroaches in his fridge. He leaves a collection of poems, three chapters of autobiography, an old Roman missal, a Bible, and a cat. On the last Sunday of Advent he sang, or croaked, the Asperges Me: 'Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, Lord, and I shall be cleansed: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.' He died on the Feast of the Holy Innocents. My wife was asked at the funeral parlour what they should put under 'occupation' on his death certificate. At first she said 'security guard' — because that is what he was reduced to before he got unwell again — but then asked if she could make it 'philosopher'. Sure, they said, he's your brother.
Life goes on. A couple of days after Christmas I was threatened with a fine of .£10 for losing my Tube ticket. To register my displeasure I telephoned London Underground and in the course of a heated, not to say shrill, exchange with an official spokeswoman, I said, more or less, that the Underground was a criminal conspiracy and had much to learn from the Paris Metro. Oh no it doesn't, said the woman; the Metro is smelly. Someone hand me that gun. I don't know whether Ms Underground has ever been on a McDonald's special — say, the 11.53 p.m. Northern Line service from Leicester Square to Morden — but if she wants smell she'll find it there, in spades. The Underground does nothing to discourage its 'customers' from stuffing their faces with lard and sugar while taking the Tube. A new slogan has appeared in central London: 'Had enough to eat and drink? Please take your can, bottle or carton with you. Help us keep the Tube litter-free.' The hint of sarcasm only makes the Underground's stupid and cowardly refusal to install litter bins the more offensive. They deserve all the litter they get and, given the amount of lewd advertising they accept, they should be grateful that there is not more public rutting on their trains. There is little we can do to hit back, although my New Year's resolution is to give money to buskers (in response to the prim public-address announcements: 'Busking is illegal on the London Underground.). There are some pretty good country and blues singers down there, though I'd like to throttle that bastard at Bank with the didgeridoo.
In callow old age I have taken to smoking cigars, which make me feel physically ill, but good about myself. I have discovered in the course of my researches that there are scores of websites in the US selling cigars at half the price charged in England. Just before Christmas 1 ordered 25 Macanudo Duke of Windsors for $128. The online price here would be about £170. The American company emailed me a tracking number so that I could follow the progress of my purchase. The log made exciting reading as my Macanudos were transported through the bleak Midwestern snow to the departure airport. Then they reached London, and things started to look dodgy. Log report: 'Package status STANSTED GB. 12/22/2000 00.32. Regulatory Agency Delay.' At 06.11 package status had not changed, and there was still no change five days later, at 06.12. Regulatory Agency Delay. Sounded like six months to me. I lapsed into one of my fantasies about Ford Open Prison (and the night on remand in Brixton, where I would he mistaken for a child-molester). I rang the courier, and it was as I had feared: the Customs boys were the delaying regulatory agency. They wanted £106 before they would release the cigars. Would it be all right if I just sent them back? Yes. So I did, and I am a better citizen for the experience. I now know that your 'personal allowance' of 50 cigars applies only if you are travelling back from America with the sticks in your luggage. I was reduced to smoking Duke of Windsors at /1 1 a go over the festive season and a very fair price it is, too, when you think about it. Where would this country be — what would become of its schools, hospitals and public transport systems — if we did not pay £11 for a $5 cigar?
An other question: what's happened to Hampstead? I was in Waitrose on Finchley Road the other day when an argument began about queueing. A woman with a Rada accent and a fine profile said, loudly, 'We English always queue. We queue now and we queued in the war. It is the foreigners who refuse to queue. It is' — and here she began to pull a vicious face and work her elbows in imitation jabs — 'it is the foreigners who push and shove and won't take their turn.' She seemed pretty pleased with that. But she was not finished. 'I am an ethnic minority,' she proclaimed proudly and, as she thought, wittily, and gave those around her a challenging look. Petty racism does not greatly trouble me, but this vain and foolish woman, a lapsed Marxist from the look of her, did. She was talking in front of black sales assistants and she was quite possibly surrounded by Middle European Jews: Waitrose in Finchley Road is usually knee-deep in "l'hirty-Niners' on Zimmer frames, some of whom, it must be said, are compulsive queue-bargers. Perhaps I should have urged the woman to consider Heinrich Heine, a foreigner. In describing his feelings about this country and its greatest writer, he said: 'My spirit sinks within me when I reflect that 'William Shakespeare] .. . was an Englishman, and belonged to the most repulsive set of people that God in his anger ever created.' Or perhaps it would have been less pompous simply to have adapted the line from Midnight Run: 'I'll say it in two words, lady: shut the fuck up.'
Stuart Reid is deputy editor of The Spectator.
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