Low life
In the money
Jeffrey Bernard
Eery year I feel somewhat childishly flattered that my birthday is always listed in the Times `Today's Birthdays' column. Although I think astrology is a load of codswallop, I have to admit to being very suspicious and uneasy about the fact that I share a birthday with Paul Gascoigne, Christopher Lee, Henry Kissinger and Cilia Black, although I must say I don't mind Cilia Black.
Apart from some birthday cards I got this morning, I got the most important card of all from the DSS informing me that they are processing my retirement pension book. That must be fairly good news too for Victor Chandler, the sainted bookmak- er. But, as I believe I have mentioned before, I wish in some ways that I felt my wretched 65 years instead of the 15-years- old I feel which continually urges me on to get up to silly japes, jokes and behave in a generally undignified fashion.
Anyway, my brother Bruce is taking me to lunch today to my favourite new restau- rant which I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, which I think is called NaveHi's, and I hope to God it doesn't end up with an argument yet again about the various merits and demerits of the Australian and England cricket teams. Were I in Victor Chandler's smooth boots I would welcome xenophobic punters like Bruce with open arms. I am quite disgustingly patriotic myself but, as I have said before, had I been a bookmaker in 1815 I would have made the French 6-4 favourites and Eng- land 9-4 before Waterloo. Mind you, I would have paid up with a smile on my face.
And, talking of betting, I am reminded that there is only another week until the Derby, the day on which Entrepreneur is supposed to sweep all before him. It may be extremely short odds that put me against him but at any rate there is some- thing quite illogical about the fact that I am not as keen about him as the form book and all that I've seen with my own eyes should make me. I shall not be going this year although I have been strongly tempt- ed. One of the boring things about being disabled is that I have to consider petty things like suddenly having to get to a lava- tory which, in a wheelchair, plus being on a coach, is almost insurmountable. But, any- way, I have seen my share of Entrepreneurs before.
I must be one of the few men in England who lost money on that racing certainty, Nijinski. I simply thought he was too good to be true and that was after having told every single person I knew that he couldn't lose. But, as the old psychiatrist said, some of us have to collect our daily dose of injus- tice. What is good is that I haven't done too badly over the last three years. Maybe it was then, three years ago when I had my leg off, that I started thinking before plung- ing into the deep end at almost every opportunity. I haven't kept any accounts or a book but Mr Chandler can't be that far ahead. But I don't believe in fairy tales and I don't believe that there is a tortoise in the entire world that could beat a hare. All that is wishful thinking on the part of tortoises.
What I shall miss most about not going on the Groucho Club coach to Epsom is not so much the race, since you can't see a bloody thing anyway, but the kedgeree and champagne breakfast before setting off which is anyway fairly strictly forbidden by the kidney specialists at the Middlesex. I never realised that there was so much potassium in the world until those wretched organs gave up on me. Mind you, I am extremely tempted to go to the Derby any- way, simply to make an illegal book.
Meanwhile, I am overdosing on schaden- freude since the oil tycoons of Saudi Arabia have been a couple of days without a win- ner. They have done racing a world of good and they pay their bills on time. But I fear the time will come when they will take up stoning their horses to death that aren't in the first three. What is a little amazing is that people are still surprised at the enor- mous success they have had. They forget that it was the Arabs, after all, who invent- ed racing about 3,000 years ago. They should know a bit by now.
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