Family Courage

Gstaad

I remember it as if it were yesterday. Rodney Solomon, a friend no longer with us, came into the Clermont club all huffy and puffy and dressed in a morning coat, refused an invitation to lunch, and announced that he was off early to the wedding of ‘my great friend Sally Curzon to Piers Courage’. The Clermont back then, it was 1966, belonged to John Aspinall, who was known for his friendly abuse of all and sundry. ‘Go on with your social climbing, Rodney, and tell that racing driver that real men don’t race but gamble…’ or words to that effect.

I did not join in. In fact I was quite envious of Rodney, as Sally Curzon was my dream girl, and Piers Courage my idol. The fact that I had never met either of them was immaterial. As it turned out, I never got to meet Piers, but became a good friend of his widow once she married John Aspinall.