Low life
Thin gravy
Jeffrey Bernard
Iam so weak now that I could barely get out of the bath this morning. I ended up flapping on the floor like a fish out of water. The only thing for it is to find a good sauna and sit in it on a rubber cush- ion and tipple iced drinks in the steam. The last time I had a sauna was long ago and in a private house in Ireland. Sean Kenny was there with a beautiful girl and one day they shared a bottle of whisky in nearly 100 degrees plus each other. No wonder the poor sod died of a heart attack. He was a good man and very amusing. He once offered me some advice as to the best way to meet a deadline. He suggested I move into a really good and expensive hotel like the Connaught without a penny, indulge myself via room service and then the fear of being arrested for failure to pay the bill would spur me on. Well, it wouldn't. The sword of Damocles has been hanging over my nut for some years now and I take no more notice of it than I do of my shadow. I think Sean may have had his tongue in his cheek when he came up with that one.
But the bath is no longer a pleasure. Thanks to being so bony it is more than uncomfortable, it is painful. I suppose I could get my own mini-sauna as some jock- eys have. The danger there would be pass- ing out in it and being reduced to stock or thin gravy. Yes, nearly everything except for lying down becomes a mammoth task when you are an invalid.
Yesterday I got trapped inside a rollneck jersey when I tried to take it off. It is too small and it stuck over my face. It was very claustrophobic and I thought I would suffo- cate. Even that had me sitting down and panting for ten minutes. And to think that I once had a girlfriend who used to call me `it's either a trawler net or we've reached Wimbledon. Either way we're in trouble.' `tiger'. All this is doubly depressing because I would very much like to get not only my body in shape but also my face. I am smit- ten by a young woman so much so that I would like to make a comeback. I am fed up with walking into the sunset by myself. Just me and my hip flask.
But at least my dear niece, Emma, has just turned up to clear away two weeks of debris and rubbish in my kitchen. In the horrible pile of the stuff I see that there are vast quantities of orange skins left over from the juice I squeeze for the vodka. Almost mountains of them. It is a fallacy dished up by health freaks that you can't have enough of it. Some time ago a post mortem revealed that a man had died because he overdosed himself with carrot juice. That being the case Jane Fonda must have one and a half feet in the grave. You don't need vitamin supplements if you eat properly and the acid from the oranges is playing havoc with my stomach lining. It isn't the vodka. Four years ago the hospital told me to stop putting lime in my drinks.
.All of this will be irrelevant to healthy Spectator readers who sit down to breakfast every morning in their grey suits and take their oranges in the form of marmalade. I never understood why those poking fun at young fogeys on The Spectator should pick on the fact that they all supposedly like marmalade. Is it symbolic of the middle classes? I shall put a spoonful of the stuff in a blender with a large measure of vodka and to hell with what the diabetic clinic says.
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