Low life
Norman defrosts
Jeffrey Bernard
Well, it wasn't a bad Christmas real- ly. Only two saucepans were burned and the men who came to dinner brought me a lovely slice of Mozart and some Polish vodka. The good will was in evidence and I even had a drink with a detective who once arrested me. What was a little depressing was the fact that I couldn't face the washing up and it sat in the sink for no less than seven days. That may be a form of surrender like not wanting to do anything any more. It must be nice to be a tortoise. Can a tortoise panic?
Anyway, it was good to have the house to myself for ten days. It is a great freedom and when the landlady was 200 miles away I felt incredibly calm about dropping a shepherd's pie on the stairs and blocking up the lavatory with some unwanted and left-over chicken. Thank heavens the res- taurants are open again. Good too that the pubs will be free from those office people celebrating with silly drinks. I popped into the Coach and Horses, by the way, for an hour on Christmas Day and Norman was being unusually benign and playing cards with three Italians — a mortuary atten- dant, the iceman and a waiter.
The mortuary attendant once brought some ice into the pub when the iceman was ill and I hate to think what it had been keeping cold. They say he keeps turkeys for his friends in one of those drawers at Christmas-time too. A useful chap. And oddly, it isn't like water off a duck's back to him, I don't think, because sometimes he looks dreadfully gloomy. I suppose he is looking over the wall, so to speak, every day of his life.
I feel a bit gloomy too and I cannot understand why the New Year fills people with such optimism. The transition from December to 1 January is to me just a hiccup in the calendar. But at least it means the end of those countless and rather boring lists of what various twits thought were the best books of the pre- vious year. There was a time when I was invited to join in such jollities. Where did I go wrong? I suppose they think that all I read is Timeform. So wrong. I have just been reading the Spectator diary. I was in fact asked to name my favourite hotel but I forgot. Rarely have I seen such nonsense from such lovable colleagues. Who on earth needs a recommendation for a hotel in Nicaragua? Richard West is the only Englishman who has ever been there and every hotel in Toronto must be very like the next one.
What I expect from a diary is useful information. I had a sporting diary once which gave the weight of a vole. I think it was 2 oz. Having lived in the country on and off for about ten years I can vouch for the fact that people are always asking one, `Excuse me, can you possibly tell me how much a vole weighs?' And, of course, the Economist diary is indispensible if you want to know the population of the Cay- man Islands. That is something that preys on the minds of many of our deepest thinkers.
Last week I was extremely grateful to be given a Kettners diary by the guvnor, definitely one of the books of the year, and the noble bookmaker Victor Chandler sent me a diary with my initials in gold stamped on the cover. Yes, after I had read the Spectator diary I gave it to Gordon the stage doorman who I thought may have been desperate to know of a good hotel in Chad. And this isn't the silly season?'
Anyway, I'm off on a working holiday as soon as I can get it together and I have been up all night quite absorbed in reading travel brochures on India. What I have read has made me feel a little apprehensive about the catering arrangements in that country. In that respect it could be as awful as Wales and you know that the Welsh are the only people in the world who have never invented a drink, never mind a game. I hope friends in Delhi will guide me to the drinks trolley.
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