I've been in Australia since we last spoke, and I can assure you that was exciting and modestly extreme. It's always strengthens one to do something involving lengthy travel, a woman and stupidity. And Australia seemed like a fine place. The whole affair has spared me the trouble of my usual melodramatic holiday-search, this year. Instead of jumping on a ferry at Harwich and seeing where I end up, this summer I have decided to see it out in my modest quarters here in London. At this time I am quiescent, lest sporadic manual labour and the odd life-drawing class.
For four hours last Thursday I became a humanitarian vegetarian, pushing aside the sardines on my plate, sating myself merely with the watercress and artichoke hearts. I happened to be fingering a copy of The Idler, and a particularly ingratiating article about 'Buddhism in cold climates' had diverted me. The crux of the piece appeared to be about the feasibility of this most fascinating of religions in temperate parts of the world. Can one accept that all existence is suffering, that the cause of suffering is desire and that freedom from suffering is nirvana when day-in day-out cloud and sodding rain? Is it any wonder we're so alienated as a people, I meditated, a fork limply hanging from my mit.
And it was only the appearance of my acupuncturist Gerry clutching a bottle of good dry Turkish red and a cylinder of Spanish Sausage, round about tea-time that really lapsed my flirtation with vegetarianism. I'm down to half a sugar in my PG in the morning, though.
I think the Buddhist theme is one that becomes hard to shake. A good friend of mine killed himself recently. I'd made him promise that if he ever felt the urge to shuffle anything off he should telephone immediately. If he was to kill himself I was to be present in the room. I'd forced him to agree to this much. He didn't keep to his word unfortunately, choosing instead to leap from the roof of the Ibis hotel in Reading. He left no note.
We were both men who knew depravity and the rules regarding the wearing of tan footwear. He was the type who tried really to rush through life with his head down and his collar turned up, and I rather think he'd prefer to avoid the afterlife, or even what Mr Hendrix described as 'not to die but to be reborn'. He didn't want to be here in the first place.
Who wants to come back as a frog, when the chances are you'll end up in a lab somewhere being thrown bodily against a brick wall by a technician and dunked in acid in order that the boffins can see your spinal cord at work??
I shall miss his intermittent visits to my boudoir, always unannounced, and rarely with very much to say. I would offer him a cup of tea and he would always say, "No thank you, just a cup of boiling water, please." He was fond of hot water, and would try and savour the difference between one cup of water and another. It was rather like having an imaginary friend in some ways. The stillness of the man and his habit of saying nothing further for the rest of his visit was at times quite chilling. It all brought back memories of a childhood imaginary companion I had, who hated me.
No man is an island, entire of itself … any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
I shall endeavour to be at the Pleasure Unit in Bethnal Green at 'The Show' next time round, and I will introduce myself to anybody wearing a desert spoon in their breast pocket. I'm actually having my hair washed that night, but I've recently acquired a Revlon Celeb Hair Stylist dryer, so I shall probably be along without any kind of frizz.
Pip pip
Roger J Harbinger QC Bar (retd.)
Harbinger dispatch is camp x-ray 'APPROVED'. When I was in the RAF we
had a pretty good relationship with the USAAF.
I can remember a conversation I had with a Stealth Bomber Pilot only
very recently, and I said to him "What are you gonna do when this damn
show's over Tiger (a playful name I had for many of the boys in
there)?"
"You can't talk to me that way" he said, "I'm a free American."
Roger J Harbinger QC Bar (retd.)
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