George Melly - Slowing Down

Slowing Down

GEORGE MELLY

Drawings by Maggi Hambling

VIKING

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VIKING

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First published 2005
1

Copyright George Melly, 2005

The moral right of the author has been asserted

The Old Fools from Collected Poems by Philip Larkin, reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber.
Muse des Beaux Arts and Secrets from Collected Poems by W. H. Auden,
reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber.
East Coker III from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber.
Surrealist Games, edited by Mel Gooding, reprinted by permission of Redstone Press,
7a St Lawrence Terrace, London W10 5SU. http://www.redstonepress.co.uk/

Drawings of George Melly by Maggi Hambling, copyright Maggi Hambling

All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

EISBN: 9780141900667

To most of my family and all my true friends

What do they think has happened, the old fools,

To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose

Its more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and

drools,

And you keep on pissing yourself, and cant remember

Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,

They could alter things back to when they danced all

night,

Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some

September?

Or do they fancy theres really been no change,

And theyve always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,

Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming

Watching light move? If they dont (and they cant) its

strange:

Why arent they screaming?

At death, you break up: the bits that were you

Start speeding away from each other for ever

With no one to see. Its only oblivion, true:

We had it before, but then it was going to end,

And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour

To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower

Of being here. Next time you cant pretend

Therell be anything else. And these are the first signs:

Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power

Of choosing gone. Their looks show that theyre for it:

Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines

How can they ignore it?

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms

Inside your head, and people in them, acting.

People you know, yet cant quite name; each looms

Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,

Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting

A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only

The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,

The blown bush at the window, or the suns

Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely

Rain-cased midsummer evening. That is where they live:

Not here and now, but where all happened once.

This is why they give

An air of baffled absence, trying to be there

Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving

Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear

Of taken breath, and them crouching below

Extinctions alp, the old fools, never perceiving

How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:

The peak that stays in view wherever we go

For them is rising ground. Can they never tell

What is dragging them back, and how it will end?

Not at night?

Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout

The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,

We shall find out.

Philip Larkin

Well, We shall find out. Only Larkin didnt. Cancer, that ravenous shark, took him first. I only hope that before the end, they turned him into an instant junkie. His muse may have deserted him some time before, his views are hard to take, but unnecessary pain, if avoidable, is indefensible. He was without what they used to call, and perhaps still do, the consolation of faith.

the bits that were you

Start speeding away from each other for ever

As an almost life-long atheist myself, I find it reassuring to come across others, in this case whatever his shortcomings as a human being, as a prop to ones own non-faith. Better cancer not much better but better nevertheless than to become a smelly old mindless cabbage dribbling at one end and leaking at the other.

Another man, whom, in this case, I admire unreservedly, is the late Spanish film-maker Luis Buuel. Ive just re-read his autobiography My Last Breath (My Last Sigh in ostrich-minded America) which, with the help of his friend and colleague Jean-Claude Carrire, he completed not long before his death in 1983. In it he made the following admirably sensible request: Some doctors do help us to die, but most are only money-makers who live by the canons of an impersonal technology. If they would only let us die when the moment comes and help us to go more easily. Respect for human life becomes absurd when it leads to insufferable suffering.

Ever honest, early in that same last testament he admits that in his seventies (he made his last film in 1976) he enjoyed what he called playing at senility, but became, as his final decade passed by, increasingly conscious of my decrepitude and only happy at home following my routine, the twin peaks of his day being two dry martinis, always his favourite tipple, one before lunch, the other before dinner, although he admits to sometimes cheating and drinking the latter before its designated hour. Later anyway he was forced to substitute the martinis with red wine.

In my late seventies I am still able to play at senility, enjoying supportive friends, singing, albeit seated and wearing an eye-patch, drinking Irish whiskey, fly-fishing for trout, looking at works of art and listening to Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues. I imagine this last will be the last to go.

I have, however, put the block on my tendency to flirt. This is partly from observing others of my generation failing to recognize how pathetic they look ogling young women, and confirmed by watching myself on a video tape rolling my eyes at a pretty chat-show hostess. On the other hand I still look forward to what I think of as treats, the equivalent of a child anticipating a visit to a circus or pantomime (my choices here date me like the rings on a tree stump).