Art & Alcohol

I have never been a lucky person. It started when I was born into the wrong family. In fairness to my parents, I have to say, I never made much effort to bond with them. It would have been mutually cruel since it was obvious to me, and to everyone else I felt at the time, that I had been left on the doorstep of a Kentish prefab. by a passing Hungarian aristocrat who would at any time return to claim me. I would be taken to his dacha outside St Petersburg (I had a sketchy knowledge of geography and architecture) where I would sit on velvet cushions wearing furs and being listened to - both of which I felt to be my birthright. As it was I was getting very little of either being landed in a family whose motto was "diligence, deference and domesticity" whereas mine was, and still is, "fecklessness, furkling and fudging".This week, however, my luck appeared to have changed. It was Ladies Day at Cheltenham Races. I had escaped from the Women’s Institute marquee – there is only so much good sense that I can take and I have a proven track record of preferring the company of badly behaved men - and was prowling. Be warned...60 is a dangerous age for a woman. The clues are in the shoes. Mine were red and high-heeled and unsuited for the task; if walking on grass at a racecourse were the task, but it’s not, is it? My eye was drawn recently to an article about The Last Taboo. Thinking that perhaps someone was going to reveal the thorny problem of the 60-year-old woman, who surprisingly to the young, has illicit yearnings and forbidden urges, I read on. No it seems that the last taboo is wearing white jeans after October. This should not surprise me. The only older woman that are revered by the public are Helen Mirren – and we knew her film career as a sex-object was over the minute she appeared in a film about the W.I. albeit nude-ish – and Judi Dench who, if she were seen on a red carpet kissing a man under 60, would have Help The Aged rushing to save her. Demi Moore she isn’t. And when they, the modern priests of the new religion of fashionability, the magazine writers talk about “veterans’ being sent down the catwalk they talk about Stella Tennant, 39, and Cecilia Chancellor, 42, and write about wrinkles and sagging on 24 year olds...They don’t acknowledge the 60 year old resplendent in her red stilettos who is securely married but is no longer concerned about mothering or caring for others or keeping the peace and who longs to be feckless. When I was 15 I was confused, insecure and indecisive. Now that I am 60, I am confused, insecure and indecisive again. For me, my maturity-a few years in my twenties-seem to have been a short break from adolescence.That’s when the luck thing changes. Looking through the race card I see ‘Character Building’ in the last race. I have a friend I ‘met’ through a reality show forum on the Internet. Unlikely, but true. Her watchword, trotted out in times of other’s misery and despair, is ‘tis character building’. I place a huge sum of money on the horse and am comforted when I see him...a sort of George Clooney, dark grey and confident with luscious haunches though I’m guessing about the haunches.There was just time for refreshments and as I wait for my friend Joyce, Edina to my Patsy, the real tidal wave of good fortune enveloped me. A tall man, well built, exuding self-satisfaction, a rascal with his jacket over one shoulder Cossack-like. We smile and talk, my Hungarian and me, and as he reluctantly moves away he kisses my cheek and it is gentle and seductive like s butterfly’s wings. The whole encounter is given a delightfully teasing frisson of squalor, taking place as it does outside the Ladies Portakabin Loos.We are back at the rail in time to see ‘Character Building’ take his rightful place as first past the post. As I pocket my wodge of winnings I think I see from the corner of my eye the Hungarian swaggering off presumably to leap astride his fiery stallion and gallop into the distance. He will remember me whenever he catches the smell of my perfume or hears the words ‘character building’, which I had tipped. I will remember that unmistakable surprise in his eyes that he should desire me. However, if I am to be truly honest and factually accurate, he did unluckily, come not from Hungary but from Sutton Coldfield.