Low life
Relative values
Jeffrey Bernard
Ihave just received a letter from my solicitor telling me that it is time for him to see me in case my will needs updating if I so wish. It may surprise you to hear that I have actually made a will at all, but I have apart from personal possessions a load of junk that will need destroying and hopeful- ly I will be able to leave enough for some- one to have a few drinks with. I have already left three or four ladies with a sour taste in their mouths. But now, thinking of any updating, a certain amount of squalor and petty-mindedness is on the verge of
creeping in as I think of quite ridiculous past slights and suchlike. So, I'm no tycoon but it is all relative.
All that plus a slice of hot summer and the fact that Doug Marks, the racehorse trainer, is coming round for lunch has had me delving back into the past yet again. It is 26 years ago that I first went to York races as a Sporting Life correspondent and it was then, just as it is now, the best race meeting of the calendar. The race train to York in those days was — I am almost sure — just about the only train running in Eng- land that served champagne, and on the way up the bookmakers displayed enor- mous generosity in the restaurant car. If You had given a teenage film fan a pocket- ful of expenses, letters of introduction to all the stars and a ticket to Hollywood, that is how I felt and I was no teenager then. It was also when I met the likes of today's lunch-time companion, Doug Marks.
Doug was always very much at the nitty gritty end of the racehorse training busi- ness. He started as a stable-lad and won a Classic on Lady Godiva when he was an apprentice before he became a trainer, and in those days, unlike most of them, he had only seen Eton and the Guards as a day- tripper or tourist. When I met him then he had won the Cesarewitch twice with Gold- en Fire but his main interest seemed to be training horses for anyone in show busi- ness. He was as star struck with pop singers as I was with trainers. Once, after persuad- ing Frankie Vaughan to have a horse with him, he jumped up on the checkout counter in a Newbury supermarket and sang, 'Give Me The Moonlight'.
He still has his manic moments although he only has 11 horses now and no longer dreams of winning Group races. I still can't believe that I actually had a share in a horse he trained. I named it Deciduous. She was a two-year-old filly by Shiny Tenth out of Elm Leaf. Geddit? I had to explain it to him. She was placed a couple of times but she failed to transform me into any- thing like Burlington Bertie. Anyway, both 1970 and 1971 at York would have been quite memorable if it hadn't been for the Champagne and the introductions from Doug to the other trainers I call the nitty gritty ones who would have played golf with their lads.
But what was to become a nightmare of hospitals and an addiction ward began and, as I say, it isn't just today's meeting at York and Doug's visit that reminds me of it, but also the letter from my solicitor about my will. I owe a few from those days in all sorts of ways. It almost goes without saying that, When I went on the first day of that August meeting to York, I left my wife and daugh- ter bidding me farewell at the honeysuck- led door of our Suffolk cottage, one ringing her hands and the other howling. They must be due for review and up-dating and I am still shattered to have heard last week that she had to go to a party and hadn't
absolutely anything to wear, Ito
And this morning that maestro of a trainer, Geoffrey Wragg, kindly sent me a photograph of First Island who has done us both some big favours this year. I won't bet today but I shall buy my daughter a party dress with what he won me at Ascot and make sure that she never has to suffer as her mother did.
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