How to Make Friends with Demons Read Free Page B

things: alcohol is not a demon. It's merely one of a series of volatile hydroxyl compounds that are made from hydrocarbons by distillation. It's a scientific process involving the transformation of sugars. The fact that it is highly addictive or that it can drive men or women to extreme and destructive forms of behaviour does not make it a demon. When people say "his demon was alcohol" they don't know what they are talking about.

    I myself am mildly addicted to the fermentation of the grape and it has on occasion caused me to behave recklessly. But there is no imp in the bottle. Grant you, a demon may take up residence and—spotting a weakness in its host—encourage a destructive habit. But that is a hell-horse of a different colour.

    The reason why my fifteen-year-old son will no longer speak to me? Because I chose not to pay the fabulous fees required to propel him through the towering gates of the privileged Glastonhall any longer. I did not like what he was becoming behind the mullioned windows of that expensive institution. I took no pleasure in the mark of "excellence" stamped on his brow. More than that I didn't like the way he treated the waiter when I took him to lunch at Spiga in Dean Street.

    I don't know if Robbie has developed his contempt for what used to be called the working classes from the shadowed cloisters and manicured lawns of Glastonhall, or whether it has been served to him, piping-hot, by Lucien the celebrity chef. But it soured my wine. I felt a deep stab of shame and, of course, of guilt that I hadn't been there to guide the habits of his early manhood. It doesn't take much for us to treat every other person in this world first with respect and then with kindness, if possible. All other virtues are only targets, whereas these two are imperatives. In the days that I'd been set apart from the upbringing of my son he'd turned into a posh, sneering little viper, unnecessarily abusing the waiter in Spiga. Of course, I crossly told Robbie about what George Orwell said regarding people who bring you your food. But I made sure the waiter heard the boy get that dressing-down before he fixed up our salad.

    I also decided that a dose of a thousand days at the local comprehensive might help Robbie's true education before he followed Sarah on to university. Claire had to suffer the same fate. Though she was already doing A levels, and didn't mind in the least being switched from snooty St. Anne's. In fact she kept telling me her new school was "cool." Robbie's school was not cool. In fact, I think he found it a little hot down there in the trenches, studying Information Technology with the sons and daughters of plumbers, car salesmen and desk-jockeys like myself. Oh, and of non-celebrity chefs, it occurred to me. So now we weren't on speaking terms.

    Lucien the pastry chef might have baled him out. Why not? He was more of a father to him these days in the sense that Robbie chose to live with him and Fay instead of me. But then my network of spies had told me that Lucien, for all his celebrity endorsements, voice-overs and book deals, had money problems of his own; something I would leave Fay to discover rather than inform her and risk her hating me still further.

    A footnote on snobbery: Robbie's, Lucien's or anyone else's. No, not a demon either. Just a deeply unpleasant human trait magnified and cemented by a vigorous British class system; vicious, sadistic and thriving very well in the twenty-first century. If Robbie wanted to continue to knock tennis balls over the net with his conceited privately educated cronies he would have to find the humility to fucking well ask me for the cash.

    There was some post to open. I tore one of the envelopes and my heart quickened to see that there was a development on dear old Jane Austen and one or two other things. By the time I'd finished perusing the letter and opened the rest of the post I was draining the last of the Beaujolais into my glass. Which, even for