Low life
Lemon roux
Jeffrey Bernard After having tipped you the horse that finished 19th in the William Hill Lincoln Handicap, Framlington Court, I felt I had lost all credibility. A pity about that because I felt pretty sure that Maori Venture woud win the Seagram Grand National which he duly did at no less than 28-1. Not only did he jump Aintree that afternoon he jumped out of the pages of my form books and newspapers and right into My eyes every time I saw his name. It was so strong a hunch that it had my guts aching. Unfortunately it was one of those rare days when I decided to be sensible and that is something that hardly ever pays off.
Just before I telephoned Victor Chandler I caught sight of myself in a mirror and I lingered in front of it for a moment and thought yes you are a twit and you need all sorts of boring things like new clothes, furniture for the impending but evasive flat, teeth fixed, bills paid and safari porters for yet another expedition to find Miss Right. So I just had a fiver each way. I'd be kicking myself still if I wasn't too weak. Always follow your instincts. Of course gamblers are rarely contented and I felt almost gloomy as I watched the horse draw away in the final furlong. Babies invariably want more sweeties than they are given.
Otherwise it wasn't a bad afternoon. Five friends including a woman who was once daft enough to divorce me came round to watch the race and I cooked them a meal which goes down quite well on such occasions and which came of the Saturday pages of the Times. Not a lot comes out of the Times now for me apart from Jonathan Meades's 'Eating Out' and George Robin- son, the Newmarket correspondent on the racing page, but this is a good little Greek number. You boil a couple of chickens with tarragon — I boil roasting ones 7. let them cool and then skin them, bone them and put them in pieces onto a large dish. Over that lot you pour a sauce which is a basic roux but with lemon juice, egg yolks and cream stirred in. It is best served with saffron rice and as readers of this column will know saffron is obtainable from the Old Compton Street delicatessen in ex- change for condoms which the hideous proprietor seems to have some use for.
But that dish always reminds me of the strange thing said by the woman who wrote it up in the Times, Shona Crawford Poole. I spoke to her on the telephone once and ever so humbly suggested I might write a travel piece for her for those Saturday pages. She said, 'Yes, but first let me see something you've written.' I was flabber- gasted and don't get me wrong, not be- cause I think I am something special, but that somebody. with any authority on the Times should not read the Spectator. Mind you, I think it is quite extraordinary that anybody should not read the Spectator. Even the cleaning lady glances at it when she is removing the saffron rice from this typewriter. She is freaked out by 'Home life' and thinks Alice Thomas Ellis is an upper-class charwoman. Well, I suppose she is in a way.
But anyway, I have got a little travel piece to write for a magazine and I am off to Lanzarote for a week. I dread it. Since I accepted the job I have met no less than six people who have been there and they have all said that it is the most boring place on earth. A volcanic ash-heap with Watney's bitter And chips. What is more an airline pilot once told me he dreaded landing there. What a comedown after a 28-1 winner and lunch at Brown's.
It is a self-catering jaunt and I am to have my own villa, a euphemism for
bungalow, and my private swimming-pool into which I shall stare all day while not cooking rice. Such a waste on someone who can't swim, thanks to my brother having pushed me into a goldfish pond when I was two and so making me terrified of non-carbonated water. The other bad omen is that Lanzarote, that marvellous Champion Hurdle winner, was killed when he took to jumping fences. Why name a racehorse Lanzarote? Would you call a horse Southend-on-Sea? No. When I told Victor Chandler I was going to Lanzarote he shook his head and smiled sadly as though he had just laid six consecutive winning favourites. And for real money..
It is all so awful that Auberon Waugh Is even giving me two books to read out there for the Literary Review, another journal the cleaning lady is quite rightly drawn to when she isn't breaking my crystal vodka glasses.
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