I am exhausted. The party season continues past the beginning of the year for me, as it is my eldest’s birthday and this year it was a big one, so a three-line whip was applied. Not that one would have been needed: the eldest is an excellent person to be around. (Along with the other two children, I hasten to add.) But it was all getting rather tiring for the gentleman who, for most of the year, leads the life of a monk, without the Chartreuse. From the 23rd to the 27th I was in That London, and the socialising just didn’t let up. Then a quick breather and it was more bloody people from the 31st to the 5th. Something had to give; it was my health.
I knew something was up when I ordered a Negroni. I was meeting my friend S— for lunch at a fancy Soho restaurant but he was delayed so I sat at the bar and ordered a cappuccino. It made me jittery so I thought: OK, a drink. But what to order? I didn’t actually feel like one.
Read that again. I didn’t actually feel like one.
The normal swanky lunchtime form for me is this (presuming someone else is paying; they almost always are): I get there bang on the dot, and whether they’re there or not I order a Martini, for this is the test of a certain kind of good restaurant. Then the other person says Ooh, that looks good I think I’ll have one too so I order another one for myself to keep them company. The afternoon continues in a similar fashion with the wines, including a dessert wine with the dessert, and at the end there is a large Armagnac to round things off. This happens about once a year, and rarely twice in a lifetime for the same person on the other side of the table.
So I ordered the Negroni, I think, because the body was crying out for something that tasted like medicine, on the off-chance that it would actually be medicine. It wasn’t, and after lunch I took myself on the train back to Brighton, more dead than alive, and to bed, where I stayed until New Year’s Eve. And then the process started all over again and by the time it was the eldest’s official party, all I could do was shiver and groan under the duvet on the family sofa. The children’s mother, whose bedside manner is not exactly from the Florence Nightingale handbook, gave me a series of lectures on my lifestyle, as she imagines it. In her world, illness is a moral judgement, if I am the one being ill. I put up with this for 19 years, bless her heart.
But she was generous with the sofa and I won’t forget that. I needed time on it to recuperate. When I did, it was once again back on the ghastly journey to Brighton. During the holiday season, and especially on the Sundays, one does not simply take the train to Brighton, just as one does not simply walk into Mordor. This time it involved a trip all around south London, as the Southern Railways train, packed with Spaniards trying to get to Gatwick, went around in a loop which kept the Crystal Palace transmitting station always disturbingly in view at the same angle. It took about half a day to get to East Croydon, where the authorities have thoughtfully installed benches which slope at an angle of about 20 degrees so no one can get comfortable. I would say that a country that instals such seats, designed to deter the homeless I presume, has forfeited the right to make any kind of moral pronouncement on any stage whatsoever.
But I got home in the end, and now I am in blessed solitude for the next three days. But I also mustn’t grumble about anything, really, for there has been a transformation in the Lezard finances – temporary I know, but it couldn’t have come at a better time. That is, for the first time in 17½ years, I know what it is like to be… unpoor. You know, to be able to give all your children nice presents. To be able to give the eldest another nice one for their big birthday and, at their birthday dinner, not have to look pathetically at their mother when the bill is presented. To be able to finally get round to having those shoes mended even though it’s a big job. To be able to send presents to friends. To be able to buy a bottle of port and some Stilton to take round to friends who invite you to lunch, instead of turning up with the barely drinkable plonk that you can ill afford anyway. To be able to put one’s heating on without fear. To be able to look at one’s bank balance without feeling like throwing up.
This is what I imagine it’s like for most people in this country – or what it’s meant to be like. That was the deal that was sold us: get a job and you won’t have to worry. Well, we all know how that’s turned out. But I am still normally the most broke person in the room, when I am in a room with people. For the last few weeks I have been living a different life. It is a liberation. Don’t worry, normal service will resume soon enough. But right now, it’s like… it’s like sitting at a seat in a public place that hasn’t been canted at a 20-degree angle.
[See also: New year, same me]
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This article appears in the 15 Jan 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Disruptors