Low life
Top drawers
Jeffrey Bernard
Although the Prix de L'Arc de Triomphe Was a personal punting success for me I m still very sorry that Troy didn't win the race for England. My sense of patriotism is, I'm afraid, based deeply in the realms of sport and, as we all know, sport ls pretty trivial stuff. Nevertheless, I hate to see England beaten at cricket, I don't Much like Irish horses sweeping the board at the Cheltenham Festival meeting and the spirit which gave us a 6-0 victory Over the French at Trafalgar is continually bubbling up within me, like the ghastly, phoney self-pride exuded by a con-man. When I think of what Englishmen and women have done in the line of duty I just swell with pride. 1.ti Manchester last week I saw something that made me so proud to be a Member of this race 'it actually brought ears toy m eyes. There's a pub there cat Ducks – quite a nice pub – With some lovely old Victorian photographs on the wall and one of the most nourishing looking barmaids I've ever seen, but it's the ceiling of the place that staggered me. Pinned to it and covering the entire surface are approximately 500 pairs of women's knickers that were at one time removed from their owners on the premises.
Now although, of course, all civilised and sensible people and feminists must realise that this is common, vulgar, cheap and quite disgusting it is also rather remarkable. I wouldn't say that my eyes were exactly glued to the ceiling when I was in there but I was a little like a rabbit transfixed by car headlights. I suddenly felt that women were, after all, very wonderful people indeed. That 500 of them should have laid down their knickers in the cause of raising a North country smirk or two is wonderful proof of irrelevancies like the fact that there are, quite obviously, 500 women somewhere who don't read, the Guardian women's page, 500 women somewhere that don't think men are all bad and 500 women it will, unfortunately, never be my pleasure to meet. They have slipped the net but they will be remembered. I sat down at a table with a fairly revolting glass of wine, seating myself directly beneath the largest pair of camiknickers I have ever seen that weren't directly enclosing a woman, and the tears just started to stream down my face. Admittedly I do have some pretty pressing problems at the moment but the tears I shed were shed, like those 500 knickers, from a sentimental but immediate joy. Think of those women. In their Rabelaisian lunch hours slurping over their gins and tonic, their ports and lemon, they upped their skirts and surrendered their last bastion of defence. To me, the picture didn't conjure up a sort of Coronation Street vulgarity, it evoked a Renoir-like vision of beauty and bliss. Where are they now, I wondered? What on earth has become of them? I had another glass of wine and that too turned to tears. I really felt for those ladies and I hoped that they had continued on life's rough road without ever having made the mistake of removing other pairs of knickers for the wrong men.
You must see, as I did, in that sudden flash of plonk-induced reality, that the 600 who rode into the valley of death were nothing compared to the 500 who laid down their drawers in Tommy Ducks. Balaclava palled beside Manchester. At closing time, last orders seemed so poignant beneath that heaven of knickers that I stood, along with three miners, an engineer and six Manchester United supporters, in silence and at attention and we remembered them. From the early dawn chorus of scraping toast to the midnight call of 'Where the hell have you been all bloody day?' we remembered them.
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