Low life
HP sauce
Jeffrey Bernard
Last Saturday's meeting at Sandown Park must rank with the four or five worst days I have ever experienced on a race track and I hardly lost a penny.Obsessional punting, by the way, is something I have at last managed to kick and I reckon it's about 9-2 against me starting again. Actually, I'd take those odds if I were you because come the flat season, which opens on 26 March praise be-to God, those Odds could shorten to 5-2. Anyway, last Saturday was a stinker. It was too cold to stand outside and watch mediocre horses plodding around and popping over 1nees and hurdles and the alternative was to watch the races on the box in the bars which were filled to capacity —crushing capacity— by those extraordinary people from London who throng the tracks on Saturdays.
The men are second-rate Gucci, festooned with gold chains and pendants. clothes bought probably from Cecil Gee, hair unfashionably too long, trousers unfashionably flared and with chests like doormats, the hairs Sticking through the chiffon shirts; they are all quite obviously very well heeled with, of course, brass bands around the real heels. I think that perhaps they are the new generation of shopkeepers and I mean rip-off boutiques. Either that or they make TV commercials. Anyway, their women bear inspection. I think they read Vogue but they can't interpret it; they are all blond, wear lashings of make up, very high-heeled shoes, have excellent teeth, drink vodka and tonic and they are all called Sandra. They have obviously got fat fees from their lovers and husbands — whether for sexual services or appearance money I am not quite sure — but their men certainly like to be seen with these women, and what is quite extraordinary since there's thousands of them, they all seem to know each other.
Another smaller section of the racecrowd on Saturdays that captures my curiosity is the lobster and champagne bar set. The men wear their money on their sleeves and the women wear theirs on their backs where, it is alleged by cynics, they earned it.
For a man to be accepted into this club he must be 58 or over, have silver hair, and a vicuna overcoat is a must. I think it also helps to wear one of those vulgar mounted sovereign rings and you must have a horse in training with a second-class trainer to enable you to drop famous Christian names such as Lester, Joe or Willie. Their women are actually much nicer than the boutique keeping set of ladies. They are so much older — raddled in fact with the hint of a varicose vein beginning to show through the pure silk stocking — and they've seen it all and there is nothing that. any man can do that will raise their pencilled eyebrow one millimetre. A cheery lot, they mix gin with their champagne and they've got heads of steel which have served them well in running and owning cash-and-carrys or supermarkets or garages.
For these people it is kudos to be seen at Kemptop Park, Sandown Park or even the rather pathetic Windsor on a summer's Monday evening. Now, if I give the impression that I am knocking these people, then it is a false impression. True, they are remarkably common and vulgar and even if not quite the salt of the earth then they are certainly the HP sauce of it, but they make up an essential ingredient of that stew pot that is the English racing fraternity. They arc certainly more interesting, as far as I am concerned, than the horses during the National Hunt season and they make an occasionally welcome change from the other ends of the spectrum Which are your Jimmy the Spivs or your Lord Porchesters. But, as I say, last Saturday you couldn't move to escape them.
The only thing that did turn out well on that arctic day was the fact that my daughter learned to lose. She dropped £2. I didn't refund it, she learned to shrug and I'm told she later reported that she'd had an enjoyable day. I think this shows remarkable promise. Anyone who can subsist and survive a sub-zero day on a Ring & Brymer sausage roll and a warm Eccles cake, bear to be squashed by ten thousand boutique keepers, lose her money and ask for more must be made of stern stuff. Next month we'll do Kempton Park the Everest of mediocrity and with about as much atmosphere.
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