Low life
Charmed life
Jeffrey Bernard
Billy's bus will seem half-empty now that Fat Tom has departed this life but it is the only way to go if you haven't your own box. But the grandstand ought to be blown up. Even Charles Dickens complained about it and it is the same one we use today. At ground level it is a sea of urine and spilled beer by the time they parade for the Derby itself and I can get all that right here in the West End. The year Slip Anchor won, Billy had a portable televi- sion which he plugged into the bus's batteries and we watched the racing from Pontefract in between the events at Epsom. Rather greedy. Betting on 12 races with a skinful of champagne is not the way to get rich. It is very jolly, though, once in a while.
What is odd now is that I have found losing has lost its charm for me. I am reminded of Maurice Richardson. We were travelling down to London by train from Suffolk one morning and as he was reading the Times I asked him, 'Anyone dead today?' and he replied, 'Oh, I don't read the obituary page any more. Death has lost its charm for me.' I no longer need to go to betting shops to collect my daily dose of injustice although I occasionally have a bet with Victor Chandler. It is marginally better to lose the odd few quid to someone you like than to flush it down the betting shop drain.
Anyway, I had a very jolly birthday last week and I am trying to put a brake on the party which is only very slowly grinding to a halt. Irma Kurtz gave me a sausage she brought back from Hungary. It is two feet long and feels as hard as a crowbar. I don't quite know how to tackle it. Sandy Fawkes gave me a lovely picture of framed Player's cigarette cards of famous cricket- ers playing in 1938. Very nostalgic. Gra- ham Mason also gave me a picture of distinction. It is a photograph of General Sherman to go with a picture of Ulysses S. Grant he gave me five years ago. Sherman looks like an escaped convict who has stolen a general's jacket. I am not quite sure why it is that the American Civil War should fascinate me as it does.
My legal advisers gave me some vodka and I had books galore so I didn't mind much being a year older. It is only looking it that hurts a little. I even got a phone call from my last wife, who is in the process of having a baby. She is concerned that he or she will be the second Gemini she has produced. I feel rather offended by that. What was wrong with Gene Tunney, Errol Flynn and Thomas Hardy? When I noticed that I share a birthday with Amelia Bloom- er and told Sally Vincent so, she said, 'Well you've had your hands in a few pairs, haven't you?' Funny things, birthdays. They seem to establish one's existence even more palpably than looking in a mirror. Perhaps they are reassuring and life hasn't quite yet lost its charm for me.
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