One for the old man
Yesterday, having arrived on the south coast to spend the weekend with my aged father, we had an idyllic time of it.
The early conditions were so-so – to clear the overnight condensation that bedecked my car windows I had to wipe them with a cloth before I could set off at 6.00am to collect the newspapers from a nearby village – but by mid-morning we were enjoying blazing uninterrupted sunshine. A brother pitched up with his dog, we ate a lunch of barbequed chicken and chorizo kebabs with vegetables kebabs accompanied by parmentier potatoes and cous-cous on the terrace and then at 3.45pm a cousin plus his spouse arrived for tea.
Before long – to add spice to the proceedings after our guests had revealed that the only time they had ever attended the Grand National was fifty years previously, the year that Foinaven won in the wake of the devastation of the field at 23rd fence – we got the special newspaper supplements out and picked our nags for The Race, almost exclusively on the basis of either name and or jockey colours(!). Your author was then despatched to the nearest bookies in order to place our bets, most of them with a maximum stake of £2.50 each way.
At 5.00pm we then settled in front of the television to watch the main event which had been scheduled for a 5.15pm start but then, through a combination of schedule slippage and a chaotic ‘off’ (featuring at least two false starts: after the debacle of the ‘non-running’ of this global institution a few years back you’d have thought they’d have better arrangements in place than this), took place about a quarter of an hour late.
Pandemonium chez nous followed as the cavalry charge unfolded.
When the dust had settled – and once our shouting at the television and criticism of ITV for not providing a comprehensive list of the first five finishers until at least ten minutes after the race had subsided – of all wonderful things that could possibly have occurred, it emerged that my father (whose appreciation of what had been going on had been vague) had won £58 by backing One for Arthur.
