Still Standing: The Savage Years (41 page)

I had intended to relay all this to Sue when I next spoke to her as she enjoyed listening to a good rant, but instead I found myself on Boxing Day writing a tribute to her for the
Daily Mirror
. I never got to go to her funeral as my face was so swollen from the bone implant in the jaw and the rehoming of my sinuses that I couldn’t even open my eyes, let alone speak, added to which I was sporting a pair of lips that looked as if I’d had ten tons of collagen injected into them. An appearance in this state at a celebrity funeral would only have resulted in my ending up in the tabloids and those ubiquitous celeb-obsessed mags and being accused of having had all manner of plastic surgery.

Apart from my physical appearance I felt like I’d been hit,
Tom and Jerry
-style, by a cast-iron frying pan in the face. The only relief I got from the throbbing was to lie down with a bag of frozen peas on my face, which I did, and I thought about life and how quickly it can be taken from you.

2012 started badly. As most of the usual suspects were out of town, my New Year’s Eve was an extremely sedate affair with just Moira, our friend who minds my dogs and consequently virtually lives here in Kent with me, and Vera and I gathered around the kitchen table listening to music and chatting. To liven up the proceedings I got the absinthe out and suddenly, instead of retiring after the midnight chimes as planned, we ended up progressing well into the morning, dancing and singing.

I gave a demonstration of my Gladiator Ballet, playing my trumpet while bumping and grinding although not quite as energetically or indeed with as much puff as in previous years, but after a sit-down and a swig of something fairly strong I was up again executing a quick jive with Vera (Vera leading). He was in no fit condition to stand up, let alone whirl around among the dog bowls on the kitchen floor like a dervish to the energetic strains of Mr Bill Haley and his Comets.

At around 3 a.m. Vera asked if he’d taken his sleeping pill. He couldn’t remember if he had or not and although both Moira and I protested that he couldn’t possibly need one after drinking so much and with the hour so late he insisted that without his pill he’d never get a wink of sleep. Just to be on the safe side he took another one.

Getting him up the stairs and trying to keep him away from the banisters was fun. I thought I’d succeeded until during one unguarded moment he managed to bring down half a dozen baubles, a string of fairy lights and Cinderella’s coach. As he stood on the landing flailing about and discarding an artificial pine garland that had caught around his wrist, he momentarily put me in mind of the bit in the movie when King Kong goes on the rampage through New York, dragging
a train off the track and tossing it casually aside as Vera had done with my beautiful pine garland.

Normally if somebody has taken a strong sleeping pill, possibly two with booze, I might be concerned, but in Vera’s case there’s no need to worry as he has the capacity to swallow an entire pharmacy with very little effect. A few years ago I started to study herbology seriously, a subject I’d been fascinated with ever since buying a book published in the thirties by a woman called Mrs M. Grieve entitled
The Modern Herbal
. It’s a tome that looks like it means business and it became my bible. Since my discovery of Mrs Grieve and the tutorial that good woman has given me, I’ve developed an extensive knowledge of herbs and their usage, growing a wide variety both medicinal and culinary and all strictly legit at home on my allotment.

Normally when I take up a hobby I’m wildly enthusiastic at the start and throw myself into it wholeheartedly, whether it be calligraphy, painting, fishing or making soap, but once I’ve mastered the basics my interest wanes and I quickly move on to something else. With herbs it has been different. I’m a firm believer in the power of these remarkable plants that we take for granted and if you complain of an ailment then I’ll have a cure for it somewhere in the garden. No matter how much you protest, you will be made to take it as it’s for your own good.

There’s no room for cissies in my dispensary and after an initial fear of poisoning, my friends have come to trust my potions and remedies, grudgingly admitting that they work even if they have had them forced down their throat by me in the manner of a strict Edwardian nanny. A few leaves from the feverfew plant, eaten between small slices of bread to
disguise the bitter taste, will get rid of a migraine. An infusion made from the root of the marshmallow plant will miraculously cure heartburn and if you can’t sleep in our house you’ll be packed off to bed with a cup of valerian tea.

Valerian is a powerful soporific and to test the potency of the grated root of this plant I found a willing guinea pig in Vera. When I brewed up a pot of the stuff he drank a hefty mugful, sweetened with a teaspoon of honey, and was still asleep two hours later, sitting bolt upright on the sofa with his mouth open like a ventriloquist’s doll in a dressing room. Eventually and to my great relief he came out of this coma, fully refreshed and claiming no side-effects. Even so, I learned from this that less is more and weakened the dosage so that it no longer packs a punch with the potency of a Mickey Finn.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend that anyone reading this book rush out to the woods and hedgerows and start self-medicating without consulting their GP first, providing they can get an appointment that is, or having some knowledge of what they are about to swallow and the possible side-effects. Herbs can be very beneficial but there are some that should never be taken at the same time as a prescribed medication as that’s asking for trouble.

Living in the countryside I often come across interesting fungi in the woods and fields and though I’m tempted to pick them I never do as I don’t trust myself. I don’t have the knowledge or the skill to identify the edible from the deadly.

Once I came across a clump of shaggy ink caps that appeared from nowhere in the shade of a long-dead cherry tree. Recognizing these little beauties from a book on the subject, I made a creamy mushroom soup and served up a big bowlful to Joan, who runs both me and the office with frightening efficiency. She was by now wearing the same
expression and adopting the sort of body language I should imagine an enemy of the Borgias displayed on being offered a drink.

Even though I kept telling Joan to ‘stop being so daft and get it down yer’, I drank mine with my fingers crossed. Moreish as we both agreed the delicate nutty flavour of the soup was, I surreptitiously watched Joan over my bowl as she swallowed each spoonful with nervous trepidation, half expecting her to keel over at any minute and flatten the dog. Thankfully we didn’t end up in A and E or with me in a police cell and Joan in a body bag. Even so, I’ve never made anything from mushrooms I’ve picked in the wild again as eating them is just too bloody stressful, a bit like playing Russian roulette.

In parts of France you can waltz into a chemist with a basket of wild mushrooms you’ve picked and the chemist will tell you which ones are edible and which, if any, are poisonous. Imagine doing that here in Boots. They’d call security and have you chucked out.

The big favourite of all my concoctions that everyone swears by is Four Thieves Vinegar. The origins of this cure-all stem from the days of the plague. Four thieves, having finally been caught and convicted after a long and successful crime spree looting the homes and businesses of plague victims, were offered the option of having their sentences commuted from being burned at the stake to hanging if they would reveal the secret that had prevented them from catching the disease. Even though they’d constantly been exposed to it they had somehow managed to evade infection themselves. The answer was Four Thieves Vinegar. It’s easy to make and variations on the recipe exist on the internet but the real recipe, the original
one that was concocted in a thieves’ garret, requires a little more than the basic ingredients of herbs, garlic and vinegar. For maximum potency a little witchery pokery needs to be employed and that is where the true secret of Four Thieves Vinegar lies. Much as I’d like to tell you, dear reader, again I’m afraid that if I did I’d have to kill you.

I certainly felt like killing Vera as I watched him bouncing off the walls as he made his way towards the bathroom leaving a trail of pine garland and a long strand of fairy lights, still winking despite the mauling they’d had. I switched the lights off and went to bed or at least I made an attempt to as Bullseye, one of my dogs, who never normally shows any interest in getting on the bed, had obviously made a New Year’s resolution to fully occupy my side in 2012. After a wasted struggle and a few half-hearted attempts at a masterful command to shift the dead and deaf weight my dog had become, I settled down on the three inches of mattress that was left and, clinging on with fingers and toes, I tried to sleep.

It dawned on me after about half an hour of dozing that Vera was still in the bathroom, probably rabbiting on to someone on his mobile. Eventually I went to investigate, only to find that he was having an intense conversation in the dark with the bathroom wall.

‘Who are you talking to?’ I hissed, not wanting to wake Moira.

‘These three soldiers,’ he answered incredulously, implying that I needed to get myself down to Specsavers. Given Vera’s alcohol and possible pill consumption, I wasn’t the least bit surprised by this response.

‘Three soldiers?’ I asked, just to be sure that I hadn’t misheard as I was a little fuzzy with drink myself.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ Vera said, dismissing me and turning back to the wall. ‘I didn’t think we’d be interrupted in here …’ He paused, waiting for me to go back to bed.

‘Yes?’ he said irritably, annoyed that I was still there. ‘I’m trying to have a conversation here if you don’t mind.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I asked, beginning to wonder if perhaps there really were three soldiers in there with him, hidden behind the bathroom door.

‘Never you mind.’

‘Oh go on, Vera, tell us.’

‘We’re planning a siege,’ he said, as if stating the obvious.

‘Did he say he’s planting a seed?’ Moira, still awake, piped up from her bedroom.

This prompted Vera to forsake his army comrades and launch himself from the bathroom into her room instead, holding on to the door frame to steady himself as he delivered an incomprehensible lecture.

Seeing that Moira was surrounded by dogs, he demanded to have one on his bed as well and eventually, after I’d given up and gone back to bed, Moira gave him Louis, thinking that they’d make compatible cellmates as they both snore like mountain trolls.

We’d been back in our beds less than five minutes when a shrill yelp from Louis and a moan from Vera shattered the silence. Rushing to his room we found an outraged Louis and Vera giving a realistic performance of
The Phantom of the Opera
. By that statement I don’t mean he was sitting in a gondola in the middle of the bedroom belting out ‘The Music Of The Night’: it was a different tune that rent the still of the early morning. Vera, perched on the edge of a bed that resembled an abattoir, was clutching his cheek, blood oozing through his fingers, howling, ‘Me face, me face!’

Louis, normally a loving little character who had never bitten anyone before, was in some discomfort from an ulcer on his eye and Vera had obviously leaned on him, causing the dog to attack out of pain and fear.

We sobered up quickly, at least Moira and I did. Vera, having clearly taken two sleeping pills, was thankfully anaesthetized. His piles could’ve been removed, if he’d had any, with a pencil sharpener and he wouldn’t have felt a thing.

I had the good sense to spray the sizeable area of his face that had been savaged with a can of antiseptic which unfortunately turned his face bright orange and made his injuries look even worse than they already were. However, I came to the conclusion that it was better to look like he’d been the victim of an over-enthusiastic TOWIE in a tanning salon than risk infection so I carried on regardless.

In the morning he had no recollection of the night’s events until he saw his face in the mirror. By now it was heavily swollen and showed all the signs of being infected. He really ought to have gone to the local hospital but who wants to sit in a long queue of casualties in an understaffed A and E on New Year’s Day? So he left it until he got back to London the next day, when the staff at St Thomas’s considered putting him on a drip and keeping him in overnight as his face was so heavily infected.

Three days later I had the operation on my jaw to prepare me for the implants. Returning home still under the effects of the sedation, I was able to empathize with Vera as I couldn’t recall how I’d got back or indeed what had happened to me. We sat at the kitchen table, Vera’s battered face swathed in bandages, mine black and blue and as swollen as a hamster with mumps.

‘Happy New Year, Vera,’ I groaned with bitter irony as I
attempted to drink tea through oedematous lips that had developed a will of their own.

‘And the same to you,’ he muttered, wincing in pain as he spoke. ‘A right bloody pair, aren’t we?’

Indeed we were.

Sandi Toksvig had interviewed me at the Hay Literary Festival and if Stephen Fry is reputed to have a brain the size of Kent then Sandi’s is bigger than the entire British Isles. She’s extremely erudite with a dry sense of humour and the interview, conducted in front of an audience, went very well thanks to her easy interviewing style. I like Sandi and afterwards in the hospitality tent she suggested that I write a screenplay for myself and Sheila Hancock as part of a series of plays that Sky Arts had commissioned. I didn’t think I was up to the job but Sandi was having none of it and arranged a meeting between the three of us at Sheila’s house overlooking the Thames.

Now Sheila Hancock has always been one of my big favourites. She’s an extremely versatile actor with enviable comic timing and the prospect of working alongside the woman who had given Bette Davis a run for her money in
The Anniversary
was more than slightly daunting.