Low life
Norman goes to the races
Jeffrey Bernard
Suffering as I do from chronic amnesia I am surprised that I can remember anything of this last Monday. It was quite a thrash.
It began with my appearing on Breakfast Time television and that was something of a cock-up. I had been led to believe that they wanted to talk to me about my new book, Talking Horses, but when I arrived I was told that that I was to review the papers. That was a little unnerving with only minutes before the red light, never mind the fact that I find live television difficult on a build-up of tea. I need two large ones to get the voice box working.
But I managed to get a plug in for the Jeffrey Bernard Handicap due to be run at Lingfield Park that afternoon. For that outing we all met in a bar on Victoria station. Half the Coach and Horses was there including a manic Norman whose first day at the races it was to be. The buffetless train journey to Lingfield has never been particularly exciting so we went armed with refreshments, paper cups and two buckets of ice. The ice was brought along by a man who works in a hospital and anointing it with vodka I couldn't help but wonder about what sort of corpse it had been keeping cool. Best cremated before 7 November?
By the time we got to Lingfield the fog had cleared and we walked on to the course in brilliant winter sunshine. Even Norman was smiling. What made it parti- cularly pleasant was the presence of my brothers, nieces and nephew, and only the daughter was missing. The publishers, Fourth Estate, had booked a room in the Members' Stand and we had a good sit-down lunch. I had been dreading a plonk and cheese sandwich buffet but there was nearly everything you could want and only the Coach and Horses draught lager brigade lost out.
The card itself was particularly dodgy, there being four races for maidens and two handicaps out of seven races, and I had decided earlier not to have a bet. Before 'my' race I took brother Oliver into the paddock. He too, like Norman, was paying his first visit to a racetrack and I thought he would be bored rigid but the poet in him reacted favourably to the sight of the thoroughbred. I introduced him to the trainer Clive Brittain who looked a little puzzled. I realised it was because Oliver was wearing what you might call his CND
uniform worn for patrolling perimeters and cutting wire, whereas I am always obliged to dress very formally for the races. And it was good to have a brief chat with Pat Eddery again. What a superb jockey.
Anyway, the race was won by a horse called Gunner Mac and I cursed myself after for not having noticed that he was sired by Gunner B, a soft going specialist. These things are hereditary and it occured to me that my father must have been a heavy going specialist. And Gunner Mac had been brought down all the way from Yorkshire, which was a clue in itself.
Then came the presentation. It is embar- rassing that I can remember it. I had to give a glass bowl to the winning owners, Mr and Mrs McHale. It had a bottle of Smirnoff in it and I don't know why but something prompted me to open the bottle and pour the contents into the bowl. That isn't exactly the sort of behaviour expected of gentlemen in the unsaddling enclosure and I suppose that although no one seemed to mind I shall probably get a letter any day now from Tattersalls to tell me that I have been warned off. I don't know what happened to the vodka-filled bowl but I think someone took it into the weighing room where it probably vanished down the throats of a few jockeys. What a jolly day.
I slept nearly all the way home to the front door, and how I then contrived to make salmon fish cakes and cook them without burning the entire block down is something of a miracle. That night, like a small boy on Christmas Eve, I could hardly sleep for looking back to a good day and looking forward to another do the follow- ing night at a book-signing shindig. And by the time you read this I shall be staying at Karen in Kenya. Not a bad week all in all.
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