Low life
Win some, lose some
Jeffrey Bernard
The pleasure and luck of having been there to witness the race was hardly dimi- nished by the fact that some French yob stole my luggage at Boulogne on the way home. Dancing Brave is worth more than four shirts, four pants, four pairs of socks, a blazer, a pair of jeans, a toothbrush and a roll of exposed film taken in the Pare Lachaise that I was going to sell to a glossy magazine alongside some deathless guff about the majority of Frenchmen only pleasing me when six feet under in the Pere Lachaise. Who the hell cut off the balls of the figure on the ghastly Epstein-designed tomb of Oscar Wilde is anybody's guess. My guess is that it was an antipodean feminist. Anyway, some old crone still puts violets on Chopin's grave every day which is right and proper.
The day before the race a friend took me on a walk around the Bastille area and showed me the church of St Gervais where Couperin played and the house Mozart dazzlingly tinkled in as a young boy. Before that, at 8 a.m., I was sipping a beer as insomniacs are wont to, in a cafe where there was a punch-up. My French stinks but I gathered that the two men involved, accompanied by two prostitutes, had been discussing sex, which is not in my opinion a subject for conversation before 11 a.m., official British opening time in most parts. Cyrano de Bergerac died just around the corner from that place and you wouldn't be surprised. I was so close to the two contestants it was a miracle that I didn't get a glass stuck in the haggard face.
But apart from English horses it is Englishmen who make this first weekend in October for me one of the best of the year. The hospitality of bookmaker Victor Chandler and of Rocco Forte who sponsors the Arc is pretty fantastic. We had a splendid lunch at Victor's hotel before the racing started on Sunday and then I watched the big race itself from the balcony outside Rocco Forte's suite in the grandstand. I watched the Dancing Brave acceleration sitting at a table with Pere- grine Worsthorne and his wife, the only French charmer at Longchamp. Perhaps that's fractionally unfair to the French but you can certainly feel that they don't like us a lot. Max Hastings was there as well and for all I know Geoffrey Wheatcroft was probably under the table. It was an Indian summer of a day and an hour sitting at a table outside the paddock champagne bar watching the world go by was a delight. Those tres chic French women must spend a fortune on their clothes and I can't help wondering where and how they get the loot for them. I think we should be told. Anyway, their husbands certainly should be told.
Just for once, coming home was awful. After the lost luggage at Boulogne I fell asleep on the train between Dover and Victoria and some bastard nicked my duty-free litre of real vodka plus 200 cigarettes. All these things will have to be replaced somehow and rich women don't fancy me any more. Then I had to spend an age with a solicitor who took down my statement about the impending court case on Monday week. And now I have just received a message to say that the Customs & Excise people are coming this morning to serve me with a summons. Sometimes 1 feel like a bone — and look like one surrounded by dogs. Michael Heath once gave me the present of a cartoon in which a man standing at a bar is saying, 'I try to
drown my troubles but they've learnt to swim.' Quite so. But at least I saw the greatest race and I shall be thinking of Dancing Brave and Victor's and Rocco's parties when I step up to the trap door. They're cruel, you know. They hang you before opening time.
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