Low life
Signs of decline
Jeffrey Bernard
The decline in the quality of life, some- thing that now depresses me even more than my own personal problems, is every- where and constant reminders abound beginning with my first look at the Times in the morning to be smacked right between the eyes by the amount of space that paper now devotes to football. Not many people would agree with me, but I am also a little aPpalled at how much space the so-called quality newspapers give to pop music and Pop culture on their arts pages.
There are less obvious signs of the decline than fast food, lager-loutishness and brutal noise and I suppose that now I
have retired hurt from the adventure of life as I knew it I have become a conservative old snob. But I never thought the day would arrive when I would comfort myself by fantasising about sitting comfortably by a fire with a fat cat at my feet, a kettle singing on the hob and the complete peace broken only by the ringing of a teaspoon on china or of a knife spreading butter on a toasted crumpet. I gather that The Genera- tion Game and Top of the Pops are now what the English want to see more than anything else with the possible exception of Match of the Day.
Of course, getting older — never mind being disabled — isn't helping much and I can't quite remember when it started going a little sour for me. After all, not a lot is new and child abuse and mugging have been with us for a good 3,000 years. But I wonder what the signs of decline were to people who lived long ago. Perhaps the likes of William Tell and his friends were appalled by the introduction of the long- bow and maybe the introduction of the gavotte was an appalling departure from Morris dancing. I also wonder who was the first woman to say to a man, 'I thought you'd change and settle down.' Maybe that was the greeting that Ulysses received from Penelope when he came back from his best-known trip to the corner shop.
But never mind the decline of the quality of life in general, it is also personal decline that depresses me. In recent weeks I have been photographed quite a lot by newspa- pers and magazines and also by women who claim to be either in the process of making coffee-table books about Soho or to be working on books about hacks. It is really a form of vengeance and the pictures are held up to me with triumph thinly dis- guised so that I can see the result of my own private holocaust.
Yesterday, racking my brains to think of somebody worse off than myself, an exer- cise idiots are frequently telling me to take up, it occurred to me that the dialysis ward at the Middlesex must entertain some sad cases. I asked a nurse did they ever have convicts in the place and she said that, oh yes, they frequently came in from local London prisons. It seems that they lie there guarded by a warder, and she said that she had known the odd prisoner who had been manacled while having his treatment. How extraordinary to think that anyone could be stupid and reckless enough to try to escape plugged into a dialysis machine. What a blood-bath that could be and perhaps a man could bleed to death in a couple of minutes. James Bond was once trapped in a sort of steam box but I am quite sur- prised that a thriller writer has never devised a nasty end for a man on dialysis.
It was nearly my end last week when a hospital porter refused to take me down- stairs to a taxi when my three hours were up. On my way up to the unit, I had used the word 'bloody' in passing, having said something about the 'bloody time'. He leapt hysterically on to his high horse and complained that I was swearing at him. Hospital porters are such sensitive souls. Half an hour later, a nurse told me that he had complained to Administration about me and said that he would refuse to push me in my wheelchair anywhere at all. Such revolting hypocrisy has made me feel quite sick ever since the incident and I have pre- pared a short but to the point four-letter word speech for him if I see him again. But something must be getting better. I have only two sessions this week and not three and it might stay like that if I can go on making the amount of piss that porter talks.
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