Juliette's final frolic
Last Saturday Pontam excelled himself for me by coming last in the Lincoln. Next Saturday I'm packing it all in, and fleeing the country for a land where my creditors and their dreaded bankruptcy writs can't follow.
It was in November 1970. one wet night down High Wycombe way, that I called on that unscrupulous moneylender, Mr Giles Overreach Skinflint, and extracted a £100 loan with which to pursue my passion for gambling on the horses. From the outset I was warned that this was a dangerous and compromising position for any young girl to find herself in, but initially all went well — on successive Saturdays I won on the Massey Ferguson and SGB chases and by the following. January had seen my kitty grow to £117.
Alas, success was short-lived and as the year progressed I found myself falling further and further into debt until the last pennies disappeared twelve months to the day after I had first received the loan. And there, apart from the ticklish question of repaying Skinflint, the game would have ended but for the kindness of Mr Nicholas Davenport who, taking pity on my plight, proposed forming a syndicate to guarantee an overdraft for a further £100. Clive Gammon, Victor Sandelson and my old friend and predecessor as resident Gower Street racing correspondent, Captain Threadneedle, obligingly signed on the dotted line and I was back in business. Evidently encouraged by this display of confidence in my tipping talents, luck returned and by the end of the 1972 Cheltenham Festival the assets had swelled to the all-time record of £146.95, and my head was doing likewise.
today you have only to cast your eve down to the foot of this column CO see that fame and fortune have long since passed me by. However, while bankruptcy is clearly the overriding reason, especially for the abruptness of my departure, a number of other factors have had a bearing on my decision. I don't relish the prospect of a new Flat season of computerised handicapping, nor the combined hurdle of our early press day with Weatherby's later publication of entries — little things, perhaps, but ones which contrive to make life difficult. But when all's said and done, the real problem is sex — mine, and the Jockey Club's attitude towards it. At one time I used to think my tender age a complimentary handicap, but am now of the opinion that were I a man of whatever shape, size and mien, they would have renewed my press pass this January. On rer,:ction the Victorian body seated in Judgement in Portman Square could hardly have been expected to be amused by such obvious frivolity. But all the same, this does not alter the fact that they have never been able to offer a proper explanation for stripping me of my press privileges, if not my rights. Damnably discourteous.
Now we're into the final furlong, Spectator readers can breathe a
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