Chimes at Midnight
I’m diminished – once eleven stone and a half (in old currency) and now nine stone four or five (first thing in a morning). I’m reminded of this diminution because, as with the internet, I use others’ equipment – the scales of the house where I’m currently stationed. I don’t have scales at home – we didn’t have them when I was a child - nor a thermometer – (‘Your forehead’s hot was about as scientific as it got). I’m happy with this imprecision. But the weight loss comes as a renewed shock. I used to think, in my eleven stone plus incarnation, ‘Oh, it would be good to be ten twelve again.’ But a fifth of my body weight has gone somewhere over the last two years. I could now ride in the Derby easily, in a way Joseph O’Brien, without the sauna, can’t. In front of a mirror (generally avoided these days) I’m sadly like Ben Gunn from ‘Robinson Crusoe’, and I cheer myself at my own reduced state with that remark of Woody Allen confronted by a skeleton in ‘Manhattan’, ‘when it’s time for us to thin out…’ A deal of this weight loss is simply water – I have to occasionally take diuretics, my heart not providing enough oxygen to the blood to get rid of water. When I’ve left off for too long from diuretics I fill up from the waist down, develop thick legs and the kind of sizeable (rugby player’s?) penis anxious teenage boys yearn for. And on that – for these essays are a kind of truth telling (a coming to terms with realities) I now have a lot less interest in sex. Or is this being, still bewilderingly??? just one of the diminished function of old age. It’s maybe why, in reminiscing, I turned to ‘Joe’ recently. Maybe I should have called that essay ‘Memories’ – to the sound of La Streisand crooning, melodramatically. The heart knows what’s best for its scant resources, and, after these complaints (in both senses of the word) I’m glad it’s decided its priority is on mental faculties. And who (least of all me) would have thought that it’s not sex so much I miss as walking – I can do a mile or two on the flat, but slopes are a difficulty. I look back on the times when on a fresh morning I could step outside of the little house in France I used and just set off for three hours, or fourteen miles or so. I’ve been writing about this fictionally lately. Or just set off from this house, without thinking about it, across Blackheath and down the hill to the Greenwich Picture House. Well, I can do that but it’s the steep return poses the problem. But a young visitor here yesterday (aged 3) who lives in Greenwich, when prompted by her parents, gave me the number of the bus to catch, ‘Right outside the cinema’. So that’s all right then: I can stop complaining about that. So let me complain instead – it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to - that a deep six or seven hour sleep is another loss. I suspect – or have hopes – that this may return, however (like my renewed enjoyment in a morning coffee). I had a great draft of sleep lately in Cambridge, where I was staying with the owners, the night before they went away. Why? I liked green tea up to the operation, can’t abide it since, but will try to work my way back to like it, and with cranberry juice (not a favourite) as a more natural diuretic. It seems all a matter of adjustments to get the old blessed balance of the body back. I like to say the body knows best, but that’s not what I feel after a – for no apparent reason - restless night. I remember how I used to look forward to Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ and was then more often than not promptly asleep (once with a friend of mine on his panel of experts) within minutes of the opening of the programme. In the hey-days of ‘Talking Books’ and my old Walkman, Juliet Stevenson never needed to read beyond her own introductory name for me to lose the first 45 minute side of ‘Persuasion’ instantly.
A triumph lately. Realising – very belatedly - that statins were playing havoc with my stomach, I gave them up, and only retrospectively told the doctor. ‘Oh, that’s unusual,’ she said (‘Is it?’I wondered) I’ll put you on a different variety.’ ‘No, you won’t. I’m going to have a summer without them - but let’s have a cholesterol check.’ The result came through today: ‘It’s perfect,’ she said. ‘Without statins,’ I reminded her. I think after following doctor’s orders these last two years I am now inclining to more ‘natural’ remedies. The pills that helped, now hinder. My diet has refined itself over these last two years: no alcohol, for a start. Red wine tastes like Benilyn, white wine like sherbert. I order tap water in pubs while my pals sit with pints. ‘Cheaper living,’ as a barman, overhearing my hesitations in choosing a drink, said. The chimes at midnight have struck long since, - ‘Memories…’ and the picture on this page is of Orson Welles as Falstaff, no nine stone weakling he.
I’m afraid I think ‘Good luck’ to the previously unknown Baron Sewel, photographed lately ‘allegedly’ snorting cocaine with prostitutes. What’s it to do with anybody else even if one of his jobs does have ‘ethical’ and ‘standards’ in its title? I’ve seen an investigative tabloid reporter, righteous in print, hoovering up the white stuff. I’m with Max Moseley (uniformed sex parties) on this one. And – almost too neatly - I’ve just been re-reading his brother Nicholas Moseley’s 60s novel ‘Accident’ with its memorable first line, ‘Trees at night are like an army marching,’ remembering the Pinter/ Losey film, and Dirk Bogarde’s masterly central performance as a don who wants sensual pleasure, an ‘interior’ performance with none of the obviousness of Bogarde’s later (once more celebrated) Aschenbach in ‘Death in Venice.’ And after this prolonged (modified) moan, that’s one of the pleasures of my new life - reading quietly, revisiting works – it’s where the idea for adapting ‘A Severed Head’ came from - though most of the reading is for pleasure. I survived a heart attack, an operation with a 1 in 5 chance of mortality. So cheer up…! As the great Joni Mitchell sang – perkily – (no Streisand obvious intentionality for her) ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.’ But I can’t leave the song there: the last lines are too good to cut: ‘They’ve paved paradise, put up a parking lot.’ Wish I’d ever written a line so good, but that’s another moan…(22/8/2015)
Addendum: 2016. And remarkably - miraculously - almost all this essay is happily out of date. Things righted themselves. With the help of a few little pills (I was wrong even about that) I am now back almost to normal - and with a taste for both coffee and alcohol. In other words, 'fully functioning'.
A triumph lately. Realising – very belatedly - that statins were playing havoc with my stomach, I gave them up, and only retrospectively told the doctor. ‘Oh, that’s unusual,’ she said (‘Is it?’I wondered) I’ll put you on a different variety.’ ‘No, you won’t. I’m going to have a summer without them - but let’s have a cholesterol check.’ The result came through today: ‘It’s perfect,’ she said. ‘Without statins,’ I reminded her. I think after following doctor’s orders these last two years I am now inclining to more ‘natural’ remedies. The pills that helped, now hinder. My diet has refined itself over these last two years: no alcohol, for a start. Red wine tastes like Benilyn, white wine like sherbert. I order tap water in pubs while my pals sit with pints. ‘Cheaper living,’ as a barman, overhearing my hesitations in choosing a drink, said. The chimes at midnight have struck long since, - ‘Memories…’ and the picture on this page is of Orson Welles as Falstaff, no nine stone weakling he.
I’m afraid I think ‘Good luck’ to the previously unknown Baron Sewel, photographed lately ‘allegedly’ snorting cocaine with prostitutes. What’s it to do with anybody else even if one of his jobs does have ‘ethical’ and ‘standards’ in its title? I’ve seen an investigative tabloid reporter, righteous in print, hoovering up the white stuff. I’m with Max Moseley (uniformed sex parties) on this one. And – almost too neatly - I’ve just been re-reading his brother Nicholas Moseley’s 60s novel ‘Accident’ with its memorable first line, ‘Trees at night are like an army marching,’ remembering the Pinter/ Losey film, and Dirk Bogarde’s masterly central performance as a don who wants sensual pleasure, an ‘interior’ performance with none of the obviousness of Bogarde’s later (once more celebrated) Aschenbach in ‘Death in Venice.’ And after this prolonged (modified) moan, that’s one of the pleasures of my new life - reading quietly, revisiting works – it’s where the idea for adapting ‘A Severed Head’ came from - though most of the reading is for pleasure. I survived a heart attack, an operation with a 1 in 5 chance of mortality. So cheer up…! As the great Joni Mitchell sang – perkily – (no Streisand obvious intentionality for her) ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.’ But I can’t leave the song there: the last lines are too good to cut: ‘They’ve paved paradise, put up a parking lot.’ Wish I’d ever written a line so good, but that’s another moan…(22/8/2015)
Addendum: 2016. And remarkably - miraculously - almost all this essay is happily out of date. Things righted themselves. With the help of a few little pills (I was wrong even about that) I am now back almost to normal - and with a taste for both coffee and alcohol. In other words, 'fully functioning'.