Low life

We were supposed to report to the Household Cavalry barracks in west London at 8.45 but didn't wake up, in south London, with a crucifying hangover, till nine. I'd been sick in the taxi on the way home, and when I went to put on my suit found that a good deal of it was still stuck to the left leg of my suit trousers. Which made us later still. We'd been invited to a parade and lunch as a thank-you to The Spectator for sending free copies of the magazine to the regiment the last time they were in Bosnia. I knew it was always going to be a struggle getting to Hyde Park for 8.45. Really we shouldn't have stayed out so late and drank so much the night before.

If my boy asks me for advice about his future employment, I've always recommended that he might think about a career in sport, war or capitalism. Forget Art, I say. Art is best left to neurotics. And though it can be a tempting career move in early adulthood, forget manual labour, too, I tell him. In manual work the harder you work the less you get paid. Fortunately he hasn't mentioned university yet, thank goodness. We don't want any talk in our house about going to university, thank you very much. We'd rather he took heroin than go to university. Anyway, he's 13 now and it looks like he's shaping up nicely to take the capitalist route to happiness and fulfilment. Money mad my boy is. A saver, too, with a lively bank account and a heavy cash box under his bed.

Sunday afternoon and I was going home with that 'making love and walking home alone' kind of feeling. A blowy Sunday afternoon and the high street strewn with litter. What I really fancied next was a nice cold pint of lager. Lately, I've switched to Fosters, and Fosters and I are still in our honeymoon period. Ideally I would liked to have drunk Fosters in a pub that was showing the pay-per-view match, Man City v. the Hammers, on the large screen. It was a must-see game. West Ham had to win to stay in the Premiership. And as the manager, Glen Roeder, had collapsed after the Bolton game last week, there was the added interest of seeing the legendary Trevor Brooking temporarily in charge. (The official version given out by the club is that Roeder has suffered a minor stroke.

The moment I heard on the radio that Dr Atkins was dead, I was in a caravan next to the beach at Polzeath, in north Cornwall, eating tinned spaghetti on toast. Me, my boy, and my boy's half-brother were there for a fortnight's surfing – well, body boarding anyway. On three consecutive days in the first week there was a heatwave. I went brown, Mark went pillar-box red and Dan stayed about the same pale-green colour. It was at teatime, during one of these astonishingly hot days, that we heard it on the news. Dr Atkins, author of Dr Atkins's Age-Defying Diet Revolution (Feel Great, Live Longer), had slipped on an icy pavement in New York and hit his head. He was only 72.

At our first terrier, lurcher and ferret club show of the new season, I was stewarding the ferrets again. I always get given the ferrets. I'd rather steward the terriers or the lurchers, or even stand at the gate taking the entrance money. But when the stewarding jobs are allocated at our pre-show meetings, no bugger else wants to do ferrets so they give it to old muggins. The ferret steward's job is to shout out the name of the class, take the 50p entry fees and ferrets from the competing owners, place each ferret in a numbered showing cage, then assist the judge by passing him a ferret when he asks for one.

I couldn't sleep. I turned over again and opened my eyes. Her Majesty the Queen was there, as usual, between me and the 105-year-old lady I'm sleeping with at the moment. Her Majesty is sitting in a high-backed chair with floral brocade pattern. In the background is an arrangement of slightly out-of-focus crimson and yellow chrysanthemums. Her Majesty looks really lovely. She's just had her hair done and she is wearing lipstick and earrings. Her smile to camera is wide, natural and direct, revealing six fairly even upper-front teeth. The light of humour in her eyes unmistakable and the lines on her face show that she smiles easily. Whoever designed the birthday card put considerable thought into it.

Bored witless, I go into town with no particular intention other than to get out of the house. I think about going to the pub but each one I look in is empty. The streets of the town are empty, the pubs are empty and I'm empty. The only place with any sign of life in it is the British Legion club. Through the first-floor window I can see people with pool cues moving around. I press the buzzer and am let in. My friend Rick is in there. He'll have a pint of mild, he says, but he can't buy me one back. He's a bit skint at the moment. I offer his friend one as well, but his friend says he's OK for the moment. The beer is amazingly cheap. I've not seen Rick for over a year and I've forgotten what a very great bore he is.

Goodness it was cold here last week. I was sitting by the fire reading an old newspaper when a robin flew past and alighted on a framed sepia photograph of my grandfather. My grandfather loved birds: he kept quails and finches mostly, and once he had a tame jay, so it was an apposite choice for a perch. In the photograph, my grandfather is dressed in the uniform of the Machine Gun Corps and about to entrain for Flanders. He doesn't look a bit worried. With his nut-brown outdoor face and his huge hands, one imagines that my grandfather will be shooting his machine-gun at the oncoming Germans with roughly the same emotional involvement he invests in blowing kisses to his finches. I met him only a few times, when I was still small. He was always in his shed, sawing and hammering.

The tax man, a Mr Matthews in my case, rang the other day. He said, 'Why haven't you answered our letters for the last four years, Mr Clarke?' I'd been dreading this phone call for so long that it was almost a relief. I wasn't much of a letter writer, I told him, which is the truth. Well, things have got to the stage now, said Mr Matthews, where bailiffs could seize my assets. Did I have any seizable assets? Only my laptop, I said. And a monitor. But if they seized those, I said, it would be a bit of an own goal as I wouldn't be able to earn the money to pay back what I owed. 'What about your car?' he suggested. 'What's that worth?' 'Less than the monitor probably,' I said.

To get to the nearest main road from here, you have to drive for five miles along a cow-shit-covered country lane. Two-thirds of the way along, where the lane is joined by a farm track, stands a wooden hutch on legs. More often than not, there are new-laid eggs inside. The eggs, lovely brown eggs marked with yellowy-green chicken-shit and bits of straw, sit neatly in rows of circular holes that have been jigsawed out of a sheet of plywood. A hand-written sign says the eggs are £1.20 a dozen and would you please put the money in the money-box, thank you. Beside the eggs is a haphazard pile of damp egg-boxes. You help yourself to as many eggs as you need, up to 36, which is the maximum capacity of the jigsawed sheet of plywood.

Last week Sharon's brother makes an announcement. 'Sharon's down this weekend. It's her birthday,' he says grimly. On Friday night I'm in the pub early and in she walks. She's wearing a crop top with a glittery number '69' on the front. Her boyfriend is expecting her round at his place, she says, pulling her 'bored and trapped' face. He's cooked a meal and got the drugs in and everything, but she can't face it. Not right now, anyway. What she wants right now is some action. There's a dark-haired young bloke sat in an alcove with his mates. Sharon fancies this bloke like the clappers. 'Godboy' she calls him. She goes over and chats to Godboy for a minute or two, then she comes back and says, 'Me and Godboy are going for a drive, Jerry.

I'm living with Sharon's younger brother Robin, in the house their Mum bought for them from her share of the divorce settlement. Other residents include Robin and Sharon's father, Jim, who isn't officially allowed on the premises and spends the night in his car; an extremely camp young man who says he is in love with Robin; and a gorgeous hippy chick with no formal education whatsoever, also in love with Robin. Plus two dogs. A tall black-and-tan mongrel, very polite, the ownership of which is denied by all, and a grossly overweight Jack Russell belonging to Sharon's father. Sharon herself is no longer here during the week. Her social-work diploma course was failing her, so she transferred to one in London. She comes back at weekends, but doesn't sleep here.

Friday night I put a clean shirt on and went up the Griffin. On Friday nights the Griffin is taken over by bikers. You know the kind of thing. You go in and it's all heavy rock, leather and the smell of skunk. The bikers were singing a song about the landlord on Friday. To the tune of 'Bread of Heaven' they were singing, 'The landlord takes it up the arse!' It was funny to see how hilarious these bikers thought their song was. Well, the landlady, his wife, wasn't having it. Trembling with rage, she climbed on a chair, found her balance, cupped her hands round her mouth and yelled, 'Just because he takes it up the arse doesn't mean to say that he's a poof, does it! The only poofs in here are you lot!' I had to push my way through to get to the bar.

I went on the Countryside March in my capacity as vice-chairman of the South West Terrier, Lurcher, Ferret and Family Dog club and on a more personal note because I think it is supremely un-English for a government to try to make us good by an Act of Parliament. On the march I wore a red England shirt, which I also wore to the party I went to the night before. The party was a very up-market party on the roof-top terrace of a large house in Kensington. Everyone there was clever, barristers mostly, and beautifully dressed. Our host, for example, wore an iridescent two-tone double-breasted suit. There was quiche and bite-sized sausages to eat and plenty of champagne chilling in the Smeg fridge. The conversation was bright, witty and ill-informed.

A Christian acquaintance sends me a typed newsletter once a month. She lives 'by faith' (no job) and at the end of her newsletters always invites me to contribute to her ministry either with my prayers or with a cheque. This month she praised God for a serious illness, which she thinks brought her closer to Him, and for finding her a convenient parking space in the high street on a busy bank holiday. Sometimes I send money, sometimes I pray. If I were to reply with a newsletter of my own, it would go something like this: Dear sister,Well, it's been a struggle, but I haven't looked at the Internet porn site Tight Anal Sluts for over a week now, praise Him. Or, Chicks with Dicks. I've been spending so much time looking at porn lately it has affected my work and consequently my finances.