December Will Be Magic Again

From 2008 - 2015 I did a lot of security work in order to finance my PhD. Some of the best times were working as a doorman at Epsom Downs racecourse at the Christmas parties, where an enormous effort went into preparing the Queens and Duchess stands for dinner dances.

There are two great pluses to door work. Attractive women speak to you, and you meet some real characters, good and bad. After one party, a man who must have been well into his late 60s, but still had a military bearing, talked at length about his security work in the Gulf, and showed me the scar he got brawling with the late London gangster John Bindon. Before I could ask my new friend if he felt John Bindon and Princess Margaret really had been an item, he was gone, very politely trying to get the phone number of a lady in her early 60s I had seen sitting at an adjoining table. On a loop, reception in the Queens Stand played a variety of Christmas songs, of which "December Will Be Magic Again" by Kate Bush was easily my favourite. It was playing as Bindon's former adversary and his lady friend swapped numbers.