Redressing the balance

As I never intend to offend others - well friends and family - with partially true stories from times gone by - I feel that it is only fair that I share stories about "yours truly", that if the boot were on the other foot, others might recount about me, (had they known about them in the first place that is).

Such as the time when I was invited to lunch with the Queen and arrived at her "country house" somewhat caked in mud. I had walked, rather than driven, to her house, which involved negotiating a half flooded lane to get there.

Thus, (for readers from overseas, we obviously still use words like thus and forsooth in England) I had to clamber up a muddy bank and half way through a prickly hedge to avoid either drowning (who knows how deep the water could have been?) or arriving with water dripping from the bottom of my suit trousers - which is never a good look, especially in the presence of royalty.

Now, whilst the above "facts" are almost totally correct, the only minor discrepancy is one of timing. The "lunch" in question took place about 18years ago, and the individual - Camilla Parker-Bowles - is unlikely to be "Queen" for another 15 or 20 years.

Why was I lunching with her? (and for that matter about 15 others) well mainly because we had so much in common.

She lived on a country estate in Wiltshire, whilst I lived on a housing estate in Wiltshire (we were also on the same charity fund-raising committee).

The lunch was actually put on for the press to officially launch the charity within the County, and was very successful.

All bar one of the committee members had contributed something for the event. CP-B's "cook" had, not unsurprisingly, done the cooking; others had contributed either wine from their "cellars" or food (most probably from Fortnum & Masons or Harrods) or something equally expensive. I had obviously considered taking either a bottle of Blue Nun or Liebfraumilch, but had decided at the last minute that it might be considered excessive by the "press boys" so not wanting to encourage any headlines relating to "elitism", I resisted and simply took myself.

After the event, I set off on the short, but potentially wetter, journey home in the rain, when Lord John Oaksey stopped to give me a lift to the end of the lane. As you may know Lord Oaksey is now a racing correspondent who began his horse racing career as long ago as in 1955 and went on to ride over 200 winners in the ensuing twenty years, including the Whitbread Gold Cup and the Hennessy Gold Cup( both races on Taxidermist).

With such a wealth of knowledge at his disposal I was so pleased that as he dropped me off he gave me two tips for the next days races, or so I thought. However, as much as I scanned the newspapers and teletext for a sign of these "racing certainties", I couldn't find them and I never go to know how much I could have won, if I'd managed to place the bets.

I do remember the two "tips" though:

"Different Class" & "Uptoyurneck"