Basically
Jeffrey Bernard
I returned to Soho this week after 18 months of self-imposed exile to bless what is left of my pathetically sheep-like flock. Frank Blake is still descending from his flat above the Venus Club strip rooms into Maison Valerie every morning to collect his breakfast bread rolls and he's still doing it dressed in a raincoat that he thinks passes lot a bath robe. In Valerie's itself the same denim-suited brigade sit about discussing the editing they're doing on their commercials and art students from St Martins come in for coffee, inexplicably fascinated by their copies of the Guardian. The TV cora mercial boys sit there plucking their croissants and saying, 'Yes, I know love, but if we cut it there — bang, bang — like that, we wouldn't have to hold him in long shot coming down those stairs looking so dreadfully bored. Let's face it, loves, we're he 're, basically, to sell the wretched stuff. couldn't agree more. No, Basil's right. Cut it and let's scrap the dissolve. Incidentally, did You see Richard Three last night. My God. Of course, basically, it's a really boring Play, Particularly if it isn't done well, hut I thought . ' By this time my coffee was cold and my mouth locked in open-jawed disbelief.
A few minutes later, walking along Old Compton Street, I saw that the season of rifts and mellow fruitiness has improved the looks of most people and that even a couple of winos look like uncrackable walnuts and not frightened plums. In the Swiss Tavern the dirty bookshop boys are standing around discussing last night's television documentary on Soho. `Oh yes, lovely stuff. Reflections of neon lights in the puddles but what a load of old bollocks really.'
Around the corner in the Golden Lion a few middle-aged men look around anxiously as I poke my head through the door fearful that I might be a little richer and more handsome than they. They are waiting for sailors, guardsmen, and professional whores. They see me, realise at once that I don't represent a threat, and turn back to their gins and tonics. I move on and continue my round of the streets.
Checking up on the Carlisle Arms, a pub! haven't been in for over a year, I'm immediately tapped for £10 which is, apparently, a certainty to be returned to me at 6 pm that night in the York Minster. Bye, bye £10. Well, they say that there's no one easier to con than a con-man and I ruminate about my lost tenner in a Chinese restaurant in Gerrard Street. I never cease to be amazed at just how bloody rude and aggressive .Chinese waiters are. I ask one of the owners of a duck and rice factory just why this is so and she tells me, 'You must realise that it isn't anything to do with our manner. Quite simply we hate you. I don't myself, but most waiters don't like the English and most of them are Maoist too.'
After this, there's a cocktail party and the usual embarrassment of meeting, face to face, those 'stars' that I've either teased or insulted in print somewhere or other. I notice, more and more, how extraordinarily happy people look at such functions. Why aren't they cursed with obvious anxiety? But they're not and it's all, `Oh Christ, a really amazing film when you think that, basically, it had no plot whatsoever. I didn't like her but that sort of bird hasn't ever been my cup of tea. Incidentally, you know how she got discovered? She was in rep in Birmingham and this fantastic old man actually pulled her and then put her in a play that he'd basically backed.' For the umpteenth time in six months I make a mental note to ask some bright spark like Bron Waugh to write a piece actually, attacking those people who keep using the word basically when it's not necessary. Yes, that's it. That's what a return visit to London does first. It makes me think they're all talking a different language which, at this moment in time, basically, is what it's all about. I mean, I know you've got to let it all hang out and stay loose which is quite incredible and absolutely amazing in a basic sort of way, basically, that is, but it's really beginning to bug me. Basically, I'm pretty tolerant but if I go on hearing that word I think I might flip. I mean it's really draggy and, basically, out.
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