Low life
Grandstand view
Jeffrey Bernard
Idaren't have a bath these days for fear of slipping when I get in or out, so I have to get help, otherwise it is a strip wash in front of the basin. Yesterday an old flame came to my flat and bathed me and it took me back 30-odd years. Looking down at my skeletal frame I asked her, 'Do you recog- nise this body?' and she said, 'No. I've never seen it before.' It is very nearly depressing but I am slowly coming to terms with disability. If she is an old flame then she must regard me as a dying ember.
Oh well, at least I am not in some ghastly NHS home. Friends have been good to me recently, keeping me company and fetching me the odd bits of shopping, and what with Vera calling in on three mornings a week I am getting used to being confined to bar- racks and this isn't a bad one as barracks go.
Now it is 5 a.m. and soon I shall be helped to the Groucho Club to get on to the coach for the annual Derby Day outing. Very soon, I suppose, a few of the Arab owners will be waking up and licking their lips with anticipation. They can't seem to go wrong except for the one who sold Dancing Brave to Japan. Even more disas- trous than Charles St George selling Saum- arez to France just weeks before winning the Arc. Goodbye a few hundred thousand.
Charles took it very well, although I could almost hear him shrugging when I spoke to him on the telephone the day after and he was pleased that I had put £50 on Saumarez at 20-1. On Derby Day in 1979 he slipped a security man a few quid who then allowed us to watch the race from the grandstand roof. It was a sight I shall never forget. It was also only a couple of weeks since I had got married for the final time and I think that day might have given my wife some inkling of what she had let herself in for.
Anyway, from where our coach is parked it will be difficult to see much of the race, but there is always something of a buzz on the Downs on Derby Day. I shall resist the temptation to have my fortune read bY some phoney gypsy as a lot of people do. I am afraid I know what my fortune is. And that has just prompted me to pour the first drink of a long day although it is still an unearthly hour. I must say that I wouldn't mind going to Epsom today as a bookmaker. Not many people have enough money to have a seri- ous bet on a red-hot favourite like Tenby (awful place to name a horse after), and it is human nature and folly to try to pick a rank outsider usually. But whatever the result no doubt the enemy will moan and complain that they have suffered large loss- es.
Sadly, I will not be making a book, although I would dearly love to. I suspect that some of those gypsies on the Downs will be Customs and Excise men in drag. Hopefully some awful member on the coach from the Groucho, an advertising John Major look-alike, may have a portable telephone so that I can get in touch with Victor Chandler, my man on the rails. Oth- erwise I shall need a runner and I have never seen a member of the Groucho Club run unless it is his or her turn to buy a round of drinks.
But I do look forward to tomorrow, when I shall glue myself to the television set and watch the first Test Match. I have had a basinful of racing which will last me Until Royal Ascot and I had to retire hurt from the recent York meeting although I backed a couple of winners at Sandown Park last Monday. Horses have no regard for one's cardiac problems. Both horses won only by a head.
What I shall miss tomorrow will be the presence of David Gower. Two swallows may not make a summer but one Gower can make my summer. Mind you, it depends what you're swallowing.
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