And they’re off!

 

It was Grand National weekend and that means, for a time, that everyone – but absolutely everyone – who’s in shouting distance of Liverpool turns into an expert on all things horsy.  Irishmen – I can’t believe there’s any Irish left in Ireland on Grand National weekend – buttonhole you in bars, by the bookies, on the train, to assure you that Name Your Horse Here can’t fail to win and then, later, sink slowly into pools of sadness and Guinness.

The atmosphere at Aintree is terrific.  The course is massive, a circle of grass track broken up by jumps set on the flat Liverpool plain.  It usually looks nice enough on the telly, but, believe you me, the wind that comes slicing across makes you think longingly of Damarts and woolly vests. By gum, though, there’s some stalwart souls in Liverpool!  Especially the distaff side of the population.  Girls with thin dresses, bare arms, bare backs and high heels a stilt-walker could practice on, teeter around teeter round looking goose-pimply, cold and determined.  There’s brass bands, big screens (because Aintree is so big, the horses vanish from view in no seconds flat) and loads of shops selling horsey things.  Indiana Jones hats, green caps, lots of things in tweed, brass ditto with horses on them and big bags from the Argentine, made by the simple expedient of removing the natural covering from a cow and sowing round the edges.  Apparently a bag isn’t a bag in the Argentine unless you can fit three gauchos and a pampas plant inside.

Peter’s company is in the centre of Liverpool and they always take a box for the National. I know, I know.  Life’s tough, but someone has to do it…

These corporate hospitality boxes are amazing.  Strictly speaking, they’re tents, but have nothing to do with Happy Campers, burnt sausages or tripping over guy-ropes.  They’re three stories high, with massive steel poles, floors, ceilings, staircases, carpets, dining tables and – for us race-goers need to keep our strength up – lots of food and drink.  There’s a copy of The Racing Post and a form guide on every seat and, instead of the usual small talk over a luke-warm martini with a solitary olive and a paper umbrella floating in it, everyone talks about Horses. 

The girl who had a pet pony and riding lessons in her extreme youth is regarded as a Sage and Johnny (Irish, of course: the English always assume the Irish have a mystical affinity with horses and the Irish don’t dissuade them) who follows The Form and knows about stuff like Prancing Lad out of You Must Be Joking who didn’t win Cheltenham because of bad light/stewards’ decision/strained fetlock/morning-after head/R in the month is hailed as a Daniel Come To Judgement. 

It’s unlike any other corporate dinner I’ve ever been to.  There aren’t any speeches and, at the slightest sign of movement on the course outside, the entire room gets up, charges onto the balcony, and yell like maniacs as the horses thunder past.  The Chosen Ones gleefully collect their winnings and the rest of us shamble back to our seats.

My plan for the race was simple enough; I backed ten horses at a couple of quid a time in the hope that, as I’d backed a quarter of the field, one of the wretched quadrupeds would come home.  The bloke in the little Tote office looked at me in a puzzled sort of way. “They can’t all win,” he said, breaking it to me gently. I smiled in a sort of bear with me way.  “I’m not very decisive,” I demurred apologetically, and I wasn’t.

 The Sage, The All-Knowing, The Irish and the Can’t Lose had all given different tips and they sounded so knowledgeable.  Gosh, it sounded good. I knew it was a triumph of hope over experience, but I might as well listen, because my original observations amounted to the fact that horses have a leg at each corner and, not to put too fine a point on it, seem dumb.

Horses circle round, back into fences, run very fast in the wrong direction and generally seem to have no notion that the object of the exercise is to stand, nose pointing east, behind a line and then go like the clappers.  I did wonder, too, if the Knowledgeable are as wise as they’re cracked up to be.  “Doctor David’s digging his toes in,” the bloke on the PA remarked as the animal in question refused to face the front.  I mean, if the poor creature had been issued with toes instead of hooves, I’m not surprised he was shy.

Well, the painful truth is out.  The Sage, The All-Knowing etc’s opinions were, in the end, as valuable as mine.

I don’t know who did back Mon Mome at a 100 to 1 – the trainer’s mother and anyone who’d drawn it in the office sweepstake, I presume – but I wasn’t one of them. 

We were, however, in the presence of greatness.  The table next to mine (and I could have been at that table – it was a sheer fluke I wasn’t) put an accumulator bet on at the start of the day.  They won £29,000.  Yes, that’s right, Twenty nine thousand quid shared between ten people.  The money came in plastic bags and looked as if someone had gone shopping for a Premier League football team and decided to pay in ready cash.  I looked at my pal Anne-Marie as she lovingly held 145 twenty-pound notes.  “What are you going to do with that lot?” I asked.  “Shoes and bags, Dolores,” she said with a dreamy expression.  “Shoes and bags.”  Love it!