Low life
Long Fellow rides again
Jeffrey Bernard
And yet there were always people who refused to realise that you can't win 'em all. A hundred years ago there was a jockey, Snowden, if I remember correctly, who was admonished by an owner for not winning a race. He answered, with respect, I'm sorry, m'lord, but I couldn't come without the horse.' Public expectations of the man are ridiculous. I wonder what his own are. Being so cool and having kept so fit over the past five years I should think they are pretty high. You don't forget how to ride a bike. People like Charles St George and a few Arabs know that too. Lester won't be short of rides and it won't just be for old times' sake either.
But now I keep recalling old times. The good old days. It was so apt that the first horse he should ride on his comeback trail should be owned by Charles St George. I have a treasured photograph on my wall of Lester and me taken some time ago by Charles in his old Brook Street house. Lester is smiling. Charles didn't tell Lester to say 'cheese', I think he must have told him to say 'money'. Both words have the same effect.
At the time that picture was taken Lester
just ust given me a lift in his aeroplane from Newmarket to Newbury racecourse. A week later he sent me a bill for L15. I have missed such jokes ever since. Earlier in the day I had been on the heath with him When I spotted a loose horse on the Bury road. Thinking that it might possibly get killed by a car or lorry I suggested we get out of his car and catch it. He looked at me, a twinkle in his eye, and said, 'Never catch a loose horse. You can end up holding on to it all f—ing day.'
Somehow, racing without Lester seems
to me to have been like a violin without a bow. Even the mastery of Pat Eddery somehow hasn't quite made up for Lester's absence. There is something about the man. Even his face haunts me from time to time and I wish a really good painter like Lucian Freud could get his hands on it. But there are quite a few people who do not share my enthusiasm for his return to the racecourse. That peerless sports writer, Hugh Mcllvanney, wrote a good piece in the Observer last week providing food for thought. I quote: 'His capacity for the miraculous is such that there may yet be further glory to be gained, perhaps even in his supreme arena at Epsom. But even that romantic possibility does not weaken the conviction that it would have been better to leave intact the nation's memories of his greatness.' He went on to say, 'Lester is interfering with the seasons of his life.' Perhaps he is but I personally love an Indian summer.
Anyway, you have to hand it to him on the score of guts. He is putting himself up to be shot down in flames. It would be awful if the I-told-you-so brigade were to get any satisfaction. I wish the 'Long Fellow' happy landings.
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