Low life
Too many arses
Jeffrey Bernard
Iam not normally a bad loser, but I struck a large losing bet on the recent Test Match and it has left me feeling distinctly sour. There is a lot of truth in the punters' whinge that bookmakers can't lose. In my case, two weeks ago, I lost my holiday money to the weather, nearly two full days of rain. So my bookmaker had not only New Zealand bat- ting for him but also the Manchester weath- er. If you think that was a mad bet, I can assure you that I took the precaution of phoning the meteorological office, but glori- ous sunny Sunday was a rest day.
Anyway, enough of that. I shall retire from the cricket field, the turf and the green baize for quite a while. I then thought that the annual Spectator party might cheer me up a bit but it didn't, mainly because from the height of my wheelchair — not a lot higher than a pram — all I can see at a gar- den party is row upon row of arses. Bending the head back to look up and see the faces only confirms the fact that they are arses. What I did enjoy, and it's high time I stopped enjoying it, was my annual dose of flattery from kind readers.
The only person there who was drunk was one woman, widow of a writer, who is mad to start with, so she was a bit of a handful. It was thanks to her that I stum- bled, or she did, on a new, not very nice fetish. At one point she sat or collapsed on to my lap and straddled my stump. It didn't do much for it except remind me of the crazy cab driver who, on lifting me out of his taxi one day last week, looked at my empty trouser leg and said, 'Goodbye, I hope your leg gets better.' Perhaps he thinks that if dipped in plant food like Baby Bio, it may start sprouting. The same driver was also sufficiently honkers to whis- per to my nurse at the start of the journey, 'If you can get his autograph I'll take £2 off the fare.'
But, to go back to The Spectator party, I realised at one point I was surrounded by workaholics and it has always amazed me that anybody could actually enjoy writing — even rubbish. You would surely have to think that you were pretty good to be able to swallow a typewriter without retching. Some, of course, have no shame as I believe Jeffrey Archer has no shame at all in following any of his trivial pursuits. Miles Kington, who used to write a good daily column for the Times, once remarked to me when I asked him how the hell he did it, 'You just write the first line and the rest follows.' Not in this bloody flat, it doesn't. If Keith Waterhouse called to see you, you would have to lock away your typewriter before he arrived. How I envy these people. I have often been invited by friends to come and stay with them and they invariably put me off by telling me as an afterthought that they have a typewriter and plenty of paper.
Not even Richard Ingrams, with whom I stayed last weekend, tried to persuade me to work. I sat in his garden on the glorious Sunday morning when England should have been thrashing New Zealand, drink- ing vodka with his home-made elderflower cordial. Then we drove over to Lambourn to have lunch with the Walwyns, Pete and Bonk. I sat next to Nora Maxwell, whose trainer husband once taught Lester Piggott a lot of what he knows now. The supposed- ly mean maestro must have been very impressed because he bought Nora a dress. The Kindersleys and Courtaulds were there too, along with one of my favourite train- ers, Doug Marks, who once distinguished himself by jumping up on the pay-out counter in Tesco's at Newbury to sing `Give me the Moonlight' when it was confirmed that Frankie Vaughn was going to send him a horse to train.
After the usual kind, marvellous Walwyn hospitality, we went over to see my hero, Fred Winter. It must have been 85° out- side, but Fred was sitting in his conservato- ry, where it must have been 110°, sipping a gin and tonic. I shall now rename the Lam- bourn valley, the Valley of the Kings, where I once collapsed with dehydration and was saved by natives bearing ice-cold lager. A greater discovery than Lord Carnarvon's of Tutankhamun's tomb.
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