Racing
Ghost trains
Jeffrey Bernard
It must have been wonderful to go racing in the pre-British Rail era.
With spirits gay I mount the box, My tits up to their traces, With elbows squared, and wrists turned down, Dash off for Epsom races.
Those are the opening lines of a popular nineteenth century ditty by Charles Mathews and if he saw us making our way to Newbury last Saturday on the racing excursion then he must be turning in his grave. By rights. British Rail are entitled to be sued by everyone on the wretched train. They advertised, as usual in the Sporting Life; the time of departure from Paddington end again, as usual, said that the train carried refreshments. The kitchen was padlocked all the way. The. temperature in the buffet car — with all the bloody windows open — was in the region of 80 old-fashioned fahrenheits and the guards and staff didn't give a damn and neither, presumably, does British Rail. They really ought to wake their ideas up. Apart from the fact that they would have taken £100 each way from the bookies in the buffet car alone, it strikes me. that they're contravening the Trade Descriptions Act.
But it's not just the Newbury train. The train to Lingfield Park is so appalling that I've vowed never to go there again unless I get a lift in a car. As for getting to Newmarket — well. You'd have thought that by now it might have occurred to British Rail to put on a 'special' for the big events like the Cambridgeshire, Cesarewitch and Champion Stakes, but no. They don't even know how to take money let alone make it. They really shoudn't advertise refreshments when there aren't any. Can this be why football fans vandalise trains? Why
travellers to Newmarket should be expected to get on a bus at Cambridge God alone knows. The return to London is yet another mad, buffetless dash when it should be a sublimely express one in a restaurant car from Newmarket itself, exactly one bottle of champagne consumption time after the last race. That very good film Oh, Mr Porter with Will Hay was apparently avant-garde. What people will put up with to see a good horse, let alone lose on one, is almost beyond belief.
I dread the journey to Ascot on Saturday to see the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stake's, but it's going to be such a hell of a race that not even British Rail will be able to keep me away from it. This year the prize money amounts to '£110,000 and if that ain't hay then neither is the prestige that goes with winning. I just don't see The Minstrel winning after his Epsom and Curragh Derby victories and my idea of the possible outcome is the French four-year-old Exceller to win from last year's St Leger winner, the other Frenchman, Crow. If I knew for a fact that Crow was back ta his best I'd come off my betting wagon, but I don't have any definite information as to whether he is or not. Exceller, son of the world champion sire, Vaguely Noble, is reckoned to be the best horse of his age in Europe and his owner, Norman Bunker-Hunt, has told trainer Francois Mathet to run him whatever. I just hope that the course has been well watered since both Frenchmen need a bit of give in the ground. I make Lucky Wednesday the best outsider in the race — he ran really well in the Eclipse — but I'm sure it's between Exceller and Crow in that order. Should Crow really stand out in the paddock on the day itself then I'd reverse the order and save on Exceller.
I never thought I'd find myself recommending 'remainders', but two I've just bought from Collet's in Charing Cross Road are well worth having in any racing library. Firstly there's the Benson and Hedges Book of Racing Colours which originally cost a fortune and which now, in soft covers, cost only £1.50. There are some 9,000 registered colours in the book — extremely helpful for the home television punter — and even if the volume has more curiosity value than anything, it's still a valuable reference book. A very good thirty-hobs worth. The other remainder I picked up in Collet's is Racecourses of Great Britain by James Gill. Originally £7.95, this can now be had for £3.50 and again, like the colours encyclopaedia, it's well worth it. The book covers every one of the sixty-one courses in England, Scotland and Wales, and, unlike so many racing writers, Gill doesn't take everything too seriously. It's a well illustrated book full of the sort of unimportant information I like. For example: Cartmel races were started by mediaeval monks from the local priory to relieve the tedium of their journey across the sands to Lancaster.You see, there's more to racing than the horse.
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