Racing
Lurch about
Jeffrey Bernard
The Lambourn Lurcher Show, held on Peter Walwyn's land at Seven Barrows, is my favourite annual event and just about the only Sunday in the calendar that consists of what a day off should be about. The lurchers themselves don't hold much fascination for me but the people who bring them from miles around to show them and race them are an extraordinary bunch. They are a sort of hotch-potch of Sloane Ranger, gipsy, racing type and farmer. The lurchers — half greyhound and half anything you like — aren't all that prepossessing and when I asked Jimmy Lindley if they were intelligent he gazed at them racing around the temporary track and said, 'You've got to be pretty daft to chase something that's dead.'
What makes it an event to look forward to as far as I'm concerned is the hospitality extended by the Walwyns. If someone had told me when I was a teenage punter trying to borrow the fare home from Alexandra Palace that I'd be one day sitting in a garden sipping cocktails with the leading trainers and jockeys in the land, well . . . Apart from the entertaining Mr Lindley there was the engaging Roger Mortimer, a raconteur of some skill. On the subject of Richard Baerlein's father he had an odd story to tell. It seems that many years ago the gentleman decided to calculate the chances of life after death. For this purpose he required his family to give him a pile of sandwiches and a thermos flask of coffee and he then retired to his room for the weekend. On Monday morning he emerged from his study and announced that the chances were 'little better than five to two against'. The matter was closed and never referred to again.
Reflecting on the people I met at the Walwyns that day reminds me of the 'names' of Sandown Park the day before. The Variety Club sponsored a race and they had that farce of a marquee they always put up by the paddock and named the 'Celebrity Tent'. Always keen to have a look at a name if only for future dropping I fiddled myself an invitation into the tent and looked around for a celebrity to stare at. The only two people you might have ever heard of in the place were Liz Fraser and John Junkin. The three of us stared at each other for a while, picked out three losers and had a drink while hundreds of people were actually daft enough to stand around the tent staring at us inside. What on earth is it that makes people want to ogle those they've seen on television? God alone knows. Just as odd to my mind is the fact that thespians really live it whatever they say.
But anyway, by the end of the day I could just about see the light at the end of the tunnel. I've been trying to pick winners from a hospital bed for two weeks and it's very tricky. It's particularly difficult studying the form of a race when some wretched student, nervous and with trembling hand' s trying to extract the few drops of blood the bookmakers have been kind enough to leave you. The light at the end of this particular tunnel came in the form of Richard Han non's Ragabash who duly obliged in the last race at 5-1. I sense a possible return to form on my part.
The St Leger this Saturday must be won by Alleged but I shall watch it with a slightly jaundiced eye since I haven't had an antepost bet on the horse and I don't back odds on shots which is what that horse is now. If! do feel a compulsion to get the adrenalin flowing I shall have a small each way bet on the French horse Guadanini. I can pass a tip on for this one from a fairly good source. Still, I shall be very surprised if Alleged gets beaten.
For a moment though let's turn from horses to racegoers. The recent correspondence in the Sporting Life about what should people wear at the races has been getting up my nose. If I wore a bonnet at the races it would have a bee in it. I know all those arguments against people dressing as they like and I don't think they hold a tot of water. The favourite of the shirt and tie brigade is the one that says casual dress would reduce horseracing to the level of dog racing, but! don't think it has anything to do with that. Surely it's a matter of personal freedom and! can't for the life of me understand how the way one man dresses can anger another man so. It doesn't really affect me in any case, since I dress in a usually dreary and conventional way that's a hangover from the 'fifties. But they've really been sniping at each other in the Life and, as I say, the anger generated by the business is utterly out of proportion to the importance of the issue. As Phil Bull once said, 'racing is the great triviality'. Isn't the difference between a Brigade of Guards tie and a roll neck jersey also a great triviality? Actually, it 'wasn't so much the anger in those Life letters that got me so much as the downright pomposity. I do wish people would stop telling us what we ought to, should, must or musn't do. Of course one of the trivial appeals about that other triviality, National Hunt racing, is that no one seems to give a damn about what anyone wears.
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