Low life
In good company
Jeffrey Bernard
Ifeel as though I have taken early retirement. I am up and about again but I have little desire to venture further afield than the butcher's in St John's Wood High Street to the north or to Marks and Spencer in the deep south. There certainly isn't a pub worth going to around here in Maida Vale so I sit at my table by the balcony and sip away very gently and slowly and gaze at a plane tree outside. I shall be able to watch the seasons come and go.
But I have to bestir myself three times this week. First to go and buy a walking stick, then to have a farewell drink with Charles Moore and James Knox at The Spectator, and finally to the Olivier Awards at the Dominion Cinema before going on to dinner. I hope we have something to celebrate. I don't quite know what to feel about the need to buy a walking stick. The weakness of my rapidly disappearing legs is faintly depressing, an inconvenience. But there is something slightly ridiculous about needing a stick at 57 which isn't that old. And now my ankles are showing faint signs of swelling. Fluid, I suppose, and probably the side-effects of recent overdoses of Typhoo tea.
Speaking of legs, the British Diabetes Association has just written to ask me to pen a few words for their house magazine. Along with their request for that they enclosed a fascinating list of famous diabe- tics past and present. I am in quite extraor- dinary company. Dig this lot. Cezanne, i Jack Benny, Ella Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Howard Hughes, Khrushchev, Peggy Lee, Sugar Ray Robinson, H.G. Wells, Spencer Tracy, Gamal Nasser, Dizzy Gillespie and Brendan Behan. That is quite a rich mix i but the two fairies that crown the diabetic tree must be Mutsyi Fuchida and Mr Gorbachev. I do hope that Gorbachev's legs are in better nick than mine. But how they dug up Mutsyi Fuchida is something of a mystery. He was none other than the Japanese pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbour. A pity he didn't flake out into a coma during his trip.
I had a brush with two Japanese in Liberty's last week. I went there to buy some china and table mats and then went to their tea shop for some refreshment. In front of me at the self-service counter was a Japanese couple who spent an eternity choosing which cakes they wanted. Over-
come with impatience I said, 'Oh, do come along.' They stepped aside to let me get at the tea and as I passed the man said, in an impeccable English public school accent, 'My, my. Some people are disgustingly grumpy in the mornings, aren't they?' I was feeling particularly irritable and turned on him and snapped, 'Yes. And some people were a little grumpy at Pearl Harbour, weren't they?' I wish I hadn't said that. It was out of order really and the man was so young anyway that it is doubtful that he had any clue as to what happened at Pearl Harbour. A bad and quick temper is a symptom of diabetes and it is to be hoped that Mr Gorbachev has his under control.
Anyway, the Diabetic Association have asked me to write them a recipe and I shall give them my tired and lazy man's version of paella which my ex-wife and I used to call 'rice mess'. I saw the recipe that Leo 'Rumpole' McKern has sent them and it sounds ghastly and is a Chinese version of scrambled eggs. They are scrambled in butter so burned that it is black. It sounds quite disgusting. Yesterday I had avocado with smoked salmon for lunch and it is a very good combination which I hadn't come across before until I had lunch with Christina Foyle a few weeks ago. I foolish- ly thought smoked salmon was an expen- sive business. Yesterday's big helping cost less than a round in the Coach and Horses. Much less and so much better.
Previous page
