Don’t speak to me of horse racing. Ever since Mother Nature mercilessly cruelled my ambition to be jockey with a mid-teens growth spurt, I can barely stand to look at a clotheshorse, much less the real thing. Just as a retired boxer cannot sniff even the slightest scent of liniment oil without his chest swelling with regret, whenever the spring racing carnival comes around I find myself thinking of what might have been.
Don’t speak to me of horse racing. Ever since Mother Nature mercilessly cruelled my ambition to be jockey with a mid-teens growth spurt, I can barely stand to look at a clotheshorse, much less the real thing. Just as a retired boxer cannot sniff even the slightest scent of liniment oil without his chest swelling with regret, whenever the spring racing carnival comes around I find myself thinking of what might have been.
Before I was six feet tall, I was a keen horse rider. Sadly, however, my horse ‘Magpie’ was not the kind of creature who took kindly to being ridden. He considered it something of a personal affront and took any opportunity he could to make his displeasure known. The horse was named ‘Magpie’ because his coat was a mix of black and white. It suited him. For whilst Magpie could be a charming beast, he undoubtedly had a dark side.
If such a thing as horse prison exists, Magpie would surely have done a little time. I’m not sure what for – probably petty crimes like theft and burglary for which the absence of opposable thumbs would surely have been the cruelest of handicaps. Whatever it was, it left him hardened. No matter how well we looked after Magpie, he was in a near constant state of relapse. Fresh hay, a handful of sugar or an apple – he would welcome them all and treat you like his best friend until, ten minutes later, he would make for the nearest low hanging branch and leave you hanging there like last week’s washing.
Magpie and I grew apart. By about a foot, it seems. Once I was taller than my father, it was clear that I would never be a jockey. My insistence on wearing racing silks at all times did me no favours on the social front and I eventually decided to pack my colours away, vowing to never having anything to do with horses again.
I have kept this promise ever since and so have never been to the races. This means that horse racing remain a complete and utter mystery to me. As best I can tell, it is an extremely traumatic event. People never look so good as they do when heading off to a day at the races. Men who would ordinarily only wear a suit when expecting to begin each sentence with the words ‘Your Honour’ think nothing of dressing up to the nines, the tens and, sometimes, even the elevens to go and watch a bunch of thoroughbreds charge around the paddock. And if the gentlemen look likely to escape a custodial sentence, the ladies appear ready to attend their cousin’s spring wedding. They also wear fascinators. Not quite a hat, technically not an antenna, the most fascinating thing about a fascinator is that people wear them.
But what begins with such scrubbed and immaculate promise and poise goes seriously awry at some point. For whilst people leave to go to the races looking wonderful, they return as though they’ve just fallen out of the ring after having gone fifteen rounds with the local amateur welterweight champion. Shirttails are untucked, shoes are abandoned and traumatised skin has turned an alarmed shade of pink. It is as though each human being has been thrown into a gigantic tumble drier before being sent home to recuperate.
For a time I had an apartment in Russell Street in the city. From my window I could see the racing crowds both as they headed off in the morning and as they returned at night. In the morning, they were sophisticated, primped and preened, alive with chatter and laughter. By sunset, they were a staggering, puking mess hurling abuse at passing taxis that did not dare to slow down. It was hard to imagine that these were the same people.
Try as I might to avoid horse racing, it’s no longer possible. Once, gambling on horse races was a discrete activity, confined to one shop-front of your local main street. Nervous, chain-smoking men would stand out the front like gargoyles and mothers would cover the eyes of their children, quickening their pace on the way past. But at some undefined point, everything changed. Gambling companies now rule the airwaves and routinely carpet bomb television with advertisements. Depending on your point of view, these commercials are either shamelessly dishonest or surrealist masterpieces promoting an alternative reality: one in which gambling is either a magical adventure you undertake with your bookie (as opposed to a form of pick-pocketing) or an essential part of the seduction process (rather than the reason you probably broke up). It’s all so very topsy-turvy. No wonder people look as if they’ve been thrown about by the time they come home.
But what do I know? As a failed jockey, it may well be that my perceptions are inevitably skewed and anything but impartial. Magpie has long since gone to that great stable in the sky and it has been decades since I’ve ridden anything other than a tram. Maybe that should change. Perhaps it’s time to head up to the shed and polish up the saddle, clean the bridle and warm the bit. Or even retrieve the silks from the back of the wardrobe. They’d be the perfect outfit for a day at the races.