Low life
Breeding winners
Jeffrey Bernard
Perched up here on the 14th floor as I am, a virtual prisoner, I am becoming bor- ingly obsessed by trivialities. In fact, I am beginning to bore myself. I fiddle with things and potter about as best as a man can on one leg, and that sort of behaviour reminds me of the onset of Alzheimer's disease which I have seen in a couple of people. An ashtray sometimes has to be moved two inches to the left, I read adver- tisements — I knew one old woman who actually spent all day reading the telephone directory as though she was looking for somebody long-lost — and I pick up little specks of things that have fallen on to the carpet. What is no longer trivial to me which was for years is the weather. Vera arrives in the morning and gives me a weather report, telling me whether or not I can venture forth for a little outing in Soho, but even on the sunniest of days I lie on the sofa in a semi-stupor, fiddling with objects on the coffee table.
But tomorrow I have to stir myself and go to Oxford and on 1st June I have promised to take my niece to Epsom for the Derby on the Grouch° Club annual coach outing. That has always been fun so far, but not much more than fun. I usually find myself to be the only person on the coach that is genuinely interested in the Derby as opposed to having a day out, and from that coach it is almost impossible to see much of the race. It is, after all, still the pivot of the breeding of the thoroughbred. What a pity people don't take as much trouble with their own breeding as intelli- gent racehorse owners do, but then I sup- pose it is bordering on fascism to think like that.
Charles Englehard, almost a crazy villain out of a James Bond story, owned the great 1970 Derby winner, Nijinsky, with whose sperm he had filled the Chase Manhatten Bank in New York. He would have had every mare in the world impregnated by Nijinsky. God alone knows what would have happened to the thoroughbred if he had had his way. Dr Mengele probably had the same ideas about Hitler. But however many experts there are in the racing world, breeding remains an inexact science and thank God for it.
Living and breathing proof of the fact is well illustrated by ex-Etonians, most of whom seem to inherit the more shitty side You just think you're suffering from false memory syndrome.' of their fathers. It is high time that that school became co-educational. All schools should be. Even Pangbourne has now got a few girl pupils. When I was there, girls were at the very best like foreigners and at the worst like enemies.
All male institutions are thoroughly alien to me and I even prefer the mixed wards although I have ended up lying in the next bed to some dreadful old bats. Some say that women bear pain very well but, my God, they don't half complain and moan about their ills much more than most of the old men I have come across. It is with something akin to terror that it occurs to me that, by the law of averages, I am due for another stay in hospital. I am still think- ing about that book I recently reviewed for the Telegraph, How We Die. It has been said that people who never touch another living soul can die because they are literally out of touch with human life. There are those who live alone surrounded by con- crete, as in places like New York, who die just because of that. It would be almost impossible to die for that reason in the block that I now live in. There are far too many nosey people to be alone for long in the concrete.
But the last thing I want to do is get involved with neighbours like that ghastly Australian soap. There is no reason why one should like one's neighbours just as there is no reason for it to be obligatory to like one's own flesh and blood.
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