Random reminder

Press, 30 January 1986, Page 28

Random reminder

GOT TO BE A BETTER WAY

These days, it would be massage parlours or yachts full of marijuana, as an example of not-quite-legal private enterprise. In those days, it was bookmaking. In both cases, there was more money than in the normal nine-to-five In both cases, the wages of sin was Jaguars. The Jaguar motorcar has always been popular with bookmakers. It has the ripup another-five-pound-note, Lofty-so-a-bloke-can-get-his cigar-decently-lit air about it One looks at Jaguars upholstered in red leather and panelled with walnut and one feels, if one is not a gambler or a smuggler or a keeper of disorderly houses or of course a Jaguar owner already, that if only one were then one could be.

It was with this feeling that the men at the pub (this was back in the days when ladies didn’t and women were not

allowed to) were admiring Flash Harry’s newest, a mark VH and the third he had had in a short time. “I bet you will not keep it looking this good for long,” said one realist “Ow much?” said Flash Harry, for it was his profession. “Ten bob says you prang it in a month.” ‘You’re on,” said Flash Harry, and opened a book. He covered individual mudguards, bonnet grille, and so on. He bet that his hubcaps would stay on, his windscreen would stay whole, his bumpers un-bumped, his headlights alight The odds were fair. If he drove carefully for a year, even for three months ... On the way home from the pub he got caught between two trams.