God is stooping down to pick the wings off his butterflies

Years ago, in The Spectator, Jeffrey Bernard wrote a weekly column, Low Life, described by Jonathan Meades as a "suicide note in weekly installments." Bernard was a wonderful writer of minutiae and had lived the intimate social life of London through the sixties and seventies - knowing everyone of cultural consequence. His emotional and financial life was precarious owing to alcoholism and there were frequent weeks in which his column was missing, noted with an editorial "Jeffrey Bernard is unwell."

Cleaning out some papers, I come across a printed page starting with the tail end of a column from The Spectator, 14 January, 1995. Towards the end of his life, diabetes (he lost a leg to it) and other complications constricted Bernard's horizons. But his mordant commentary continued. While the headline and opening paragraphs are missing, the style is so quintessentially Bernard, I recognized it immediately despite his passing 20 years ago.

. . . laugh and I remember Peter (Cook) being extremely reluctant to buy a round of drinks but they worked so well together and when Dudley Moore opted for Hollywood Peter lost his sounding board. And now, what with John Osborne gone as well, it is as though God is stooping down to pick the wings off his butterflies. Death is not far away in the future, it is as close as your hands are over your eyes. All of which goes to remind me that this is my 16th week without a drink and if anyone calls it living then the phrase 'a matter of life and death' hasn't much meaning. But whatever I feel, sitting here for such long periods as to make my arse and stump ache, I watch forms of life continue.