Low life
Misspent time
Jeffrey Bernard
This is the sort of thing that comes through the letter-box: 'Dear Sir, I've been reading a few things of yours in The Spectator, not a lot but enough to make me wish for meeting you some where. That's it. I'm writing you to see (find out?) if yo!, would like to misspend a bit of your time with me. I'm not very interesting, some- times with a bit of efforts I attain to be, but I have a pair of boots that it can be lace up, up. I'll be looking the post every day since now with my fingers cross and the tele- phone!! Saluds Muchos, Mari.'
I wrote a similar kind of letter to Veronica Lake when I was 13. But I think Mari probably is interesting although I am not into lace-up boots, blind dates or going all the way over to SE24 for a helping of paella and a flamenco legover. At the bottom of the letter Mari has made a little drawing of a bicycle. I'm not quite sure what that means but whatever it means, I am far too old for that kind of hanky- panky. I need four legs never mind four wheels. Thanks anyway, Mari. It is nice to get a sweet letter.
Some of the letters I get in Fleet Street — not to The Spectator — can be quite mad. You would be amazed at the amount of anger a trivial bit of journalism can arouse. Any day now I expect to receive a letter bomb because I smoke. There must be somewhere where people don't give a damn about what you do to yourself. It's probably a toss-up between Lambourn and Bridgetown. And I must go down to Lambourn again in the spring to watch them work the two-year-olds and to see Flo in the Red Lion — England's nicest bar- maid. It is an annual treat to see Peter Walwyn's horses on the gallops at the top of the Downs and then to descend to Seven Barrows for breakfast.
The only trouble with Lambourn is that it holds some terrible memories for me and I still have daymares as well as nightmares about some terrible driving incidents ten years ago and the shame of it all is still with me. Never again. At least there are taxis in Newmarket but only one in Lambourn at the last count. Without a car in Lambourn you could be dead and with one and 'just the one' someone else could be dead.
But I have never taken to Newmarket and I wonder how it became racing's headquarters. I suppose because it is flat and open, but that is why it can be so bloody cold when the wind comes across the Heath from the North Sea. The only things I like about it are the sales — not only fascinating but great social fun — the famous sausages sold in the High Street butchers, Charles St George's princely hospitality, a cocktail with Pauline Lamb- ton and a glass of champagne under trees on the July Course. The last time I was there I went to see Fred Archer's grave in the churchyard. I have two pictures of him on the wall. Such a melancholy-looking man and I don't know quite why but his suicide seems slightly sadder than your run-of-the-mill overdose today.
Opposite that churchyard there is quite a hairy pub. Or at least it was 18 years ago when I was on the Sporting Life. Jockeys and stable lads are partial to the occasional punch-up. I have known three who could have taken to the ring instead of the turf. In the old days stable lads boxed to keep fit and the habit has stuck.
I do remember one thing I liked about Newmarket at one time and that was having a drink and passing the time of day with Tommy Weston in the Subscription Rooms. He'd sit there waffling away about the past and I would look at him and think how strange that this little old man rode both Sansovino and Hyperion to win the Derby. He had bundles from Lord Derby in his time, blew it and sadly at the end couldn't go into the Rooms because he was then incontinent.
I once played a game of clock golf there in the garden for £10 a hole with barely a shilling in my pocket and somehow scraped out of that. Hectic days. The editor com- plained recently about my filing the same column twice from Kenya. On 2,000 Guineas day in 1971 I filed the same column five times to the Sporting Life in one afternoon. At the last telephone call the copy-taker said, 'You've been in the Subscription Rooms all morning, haven't you?' Yes indeed.
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