Low life
Guinness and mash
Jeffrey Bernard
Now that flat racing is with us again we born-again losers will shortly become re- acquainted with the agony of victory and the thrill of defeat. I hope to see Framling- ton Park win the William Hill Lincoln Handicap today, although at the moment I don't know where he is drawn. Norman and the Groucho Club need the money and the trainer, Peter Walywn, is a very decent man. Unfortunately the wizards at Time- form label the horse as being inconsistent. Who isn't?
But spring is in the air and I bought a pair of binoculars this week which will . doubtless be lost in some members' bar between York and Brighton before the Derby. It is amazing the number of pairs of bins I have lost in bars and on trains since 1970. And, sad to say, we have also lost the man who supplied us with cheap caviare on the racecourse. Where he got it from was a mystery I never tried to solve. There are some things the world is not yet ready to know, as Dr Watson was fond of saying.
But it will be good to see the 'faces' at the races again, even those of some really rather awful people, even the bookmaker who has the dreadful habit of addressing me as 'young man'. That's so bloody rude and patronising and I don't need reassur- ances about my age and appearance. There's a stall-holder in Berwick Street market I have stopped shopping with because he uses the phrase. Speak stan- dard English and they think you are an idiot. When he says, 'How about some lovely fennel, young man?' I know he is thinking, `Cor blimey, it's that bleary-eyed prick again. Expect he's a poof.'
Yes, it is high time the myth of the lovable cockney was exposed. It probably started with Shaw's Henry Higgins. Maybe Kipling. And what has kept the myth going is that so many middle-class people think it rather smart, engaging and amusing to have a working-class acquaintance. I could point you to a man with a stall who would punch you in the mouth if you touched an avocado to test it for ripeness.
There's a lot of it in the country too where every village has its cracker-barrel philosopher who bores the arse off you. Me anyway. Any day now somebody is going to tell me what his man at the garage thinks is going to win the 2,000 Guineas. I only welcome suggestions from people professionally involved in racing and I didn't get where I am today by listening to my barber, milkman, or the lunatic in the off licence. And now, sitting here in the gutter, I wonder if I should have done.
Of course, as we all know, jockeys are the worst tipsters. When they start talking to me I feel I should tie myself to the mast, as it were. I will also back anything tipped to me by an Irish trainer. Mick O'Toole was a butcher then a greyhound trainer before he took to racehorses and he kindly took me to the dogs in Dublin one night. He really knows his dogs. We backed eight consecutive losers that night and he had to lend me the money to pay for my hotel.
'It's a bonsai giant redwood.' Well, he didn't have to. Then at the Curragh he took me to a pub that Pat Eddery's father ran one Sunday lunchtime for the one. He really meant just the one and implied that his wife might assault him if we were late back and spoiled the lunch. We left that pub the following afternoon. He's a good man and a fearless punter. was looking at a horse in his yard once and ventured that he could probably stay pretty well. Mick turned round and said, 'He couldn't stay seven furlings in a fucking horse-box.'
I shall go back to Dublin at the earliest opportunity. People keep saying how dreadfully expensive it is, which I know, but they will keep using a pint of Guinness as a yardstick by which to measure the cost of living. I don't really give a damn about the cost of Guinness and I dread being given it on the National Health when I end up in an old people's home. Which reminds me, I am told that there is an obscure renal disease which necessi- tates shots of gin. But I suppose the stuff really must be good for you. They used to give Arkle two pints of Guinness a day with his mash and six raw eggs, and he could jump a bit. I just hope that Framling- ton Park finished up all his greens and pudding last night.
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