📸 Photo

SNOWING IN BALI

Sparrow may have been a bit flaky, but he’d flashed past the post in the end. He went straight to the Bali Subak Hotel in Legian, where many runners stayed, and had a bit of a lie-down, daydreaming now of the sunny weeks ahead of surfing and partying.

A few hours later, Rafael picked him up in his Jimny, swung via Fabio’s house – he was also an investor in this run – and went to a party where Sparrow met the island’s big buyers, the Indonesians. It was rare that a horse got to meet them, but Sparrow was a friend of Rafael’s.

Barbara had also met them, but she wasn’t ever going to deal directly with them. That was no risk; she was a disaster. She turned up at Rafael’s house one day wanting to buy some coke to use, but he was rushing out to a party at a big Indonesian boss’s villa. She tagged along.

It was sophisticated and posh, with the rich Indonesians smoking cigars and bringing out a silver tray to serve up lines of coke for everyone in the room. They gave it to their trustable man, Rafael, first but he gestured to Barbara, saying, ‘Ladies first.’ Barbara picked up the little straw and bent over the silver tray, but was finishing a mouthful of chips. She sneezed, spitting bits of chip all over the plate and blowing the coke to smithereens. Rafael was embarrassed and apologised profusely, then pulled out his own coke to make new lines, after cleaning off Barbara’s soggy chip bits.

I say, fuck, I cannot take this bitch anymore. She’s too much. I was so embarrassed in front of the big boss at the table. I say, ‘Barbara, look what you did.’ She says, ‘Sorry, sorry.’

The coke disappeared, flew, potato spit everywhere. I take care of the situation … I say, ‘Oh sorry, sorry,’ and then run to the toilet, wash

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