Food for thought - pies and tarts and real ales; Eighty+ Another week older and deeper in debt Sir Clement Freud.

Byline: Sir Clement Freud 

THERE is so much that is Great about Britain: not just that we call ourselves Great, but we have among other Greats Great Malvern, Great Yarmouth, Great Snoring, Great Dunmow (where I had an aunt), Great Missenden, Great Yeldham and Great Leighs; the last of these, just up the A131 from Little Leighs - should you get to Young's End you've gone too far - opened for sport last Sunday.

What Great Leighs has done is admirable. Local tycoon John Holmes noticed this flat piece of land that used to be the site of the Essex County Show and, just as Queen Anne had done near Windsor in Berkshire 300 years earlier, said: "This would make a nice racecourse" - although presumably in a deeper voice.

Things took a while. The opening itself had been due to coincide with the birth of my youngest grandson, who can now fillet a Dover sole with two forks, but it opened on Sunday, to the substantial approval of jockeys and Newmarket trainers and the many organisations that consider themselves responsible for racing.

There is as yet no grandstand, bars are a luxury planned for the future, as are restaurants, and there ain't anywhere to sit, although rumour has it that lavatorial accommodation has been provided. It is open the way Her Majesty's garden parties are open: you need an invitation to get in.

And it occurred to me that Mr Holmes just might have got it wrong.

There are 59 other racecourses in Great Britain, although admittedly no other all-weather tracks within an hour's horsebox drive from Newmarket, but what we need on weekend afternoons and early evenings are places to go where there are restaurants and bars and places to sit. Also handsomely organised car parks, ideally punctuated by cardsharps and people who will engage you in Find the Lady and Crown and Anchor and sell you tips, as did the late lamented Prince Monolulu.

There might also be facilities for getting your car cleaned. Quality cloakrooms with masseurs should abound, and perhaps a few stretch limos such as there used to be in the No. 3 car park during Royal Ascot.

Limos that bounced up and down with the engine switched off. Limos from which emerged, at ten-to 15-minute intervals, sparsely garbed men to whom articles of clothing were passed from inside the vehicle until such time as they were once again fully dressed in accordance with the code demanded by Her Majesty's representative. Hats came out last and were the signal for the arrival of the new select intake, some of them bearing flowers.

So, instead of building a 61st British racecourse that will involve years of planning and draining and gravelling and smoothing and ramping and levelling and providing the right camber in the appropriate places, then postponing and apologising and rearranging, someone should construct 600 metres of what are now considered 'accessories' to racecourses. RESTAURANTS and bars that pack a punch, from elaborate French via traditional English to authentic fish. There shall be a facility for roasted suckling pig with Bramley apple sauce and slices of freshly baked sourdough bread.

Buttery sausage rolls such as they make at The Ginger Pig in Moxon Street, London W1. Raised pork pies from Melton Mowbray. Truffled chicken, Reform lamb cutlets, smoked fish with lemon, horseradish cream and green peppercorn sauce, from salmon via tuna and swordfish to fillets of eel.

A soda fountain with milkshakes, Ben and Jerry's ice cream and tartes tatin made to order; fresh fruit jellies and Pavlovas and Cornish cream and throughout a superfluity of nice young people to clear away the dirty dishes and plates and glasses and keep the place looking immaculate.

If York can do champagne at pounds 22 a bottle, so can others. I would like to see a bar that prides itself on real ales like Adnams and Fullers, that sells a range of dry and sweet ciders, that makes its own lemonade. For a half-pint glass, put into a liquidiser one ripe lemon cut into quarters.

One small egg, shell and all. A level tablespoon of sugar. Four ice cubes, and a tea-cup of water. Blend for 15 seconds and strain through a sieve into a frosted glass that has been kept in the freezer.

Build a bloody great platform bearing an absolutely huge screen that will show racing from every track in the land. Have bookmakers within walking distance and at the end of telephones.

Nietzche - and presumably Max Mosley too - said "Go to a woman with a whip". For the time being, should you receive an invitation or have a runner there, go to Great Leighs with a bacon sandwich.

'We need places to go where there are restaurants and bars and places to sit'