Being there
Jeremy Clarke
Iwas there! At the rails, cheering Best Mate on to victory. At least I think it was Best Mate. Hard to tell when they gallop past in a bunch like that. I cheered anyway, in case it was him — or her — in the lead. I wasn't entirely sure it was the Gold Cup I was watching either, frankly. It was a peculiar effect of the champagne we were drinking that the more I consumed, the more frequent the races became. By midafternoon there seemed to be a race about once a minute and it was hard to keep abreast. I looked at my watch. It had gone. Stolen presumably, or perhaps given away to a passing stranger. I searched my pockets for my race card without success.
After what I thought was the Gold Cup, I made for the hospitality tent whence I'd come. You should have seen these hospitality tents. They were soft and billowing and voluptuous, like something out of The Arabian Nights. Rows and rows of them, each equipped with a free bar, tables set for lunch and a fiat-screen TV. Instead of jostling for a place near the rails with finest Gloucestershire mud seeping into your tweed turn-ups, it was possible to sit and watch the races on TV in the tent and pretend you were on holiday in the Yemen.
The tent I had been invited to, when I found the right one, contained peers of the realm being power-hosed with vintage champagne. Indeed, our host dispensed refreshments with such liberality, and it had been so long since I'd last had a drink, I went from mute diffidence to violent megalomania to gonk-like stupefaction in about 20 minutes flat.
Just before each race these lords clustered around a mobile phone to listen to the predictions of a racing tipster called Colonel Pinstripe. The Colonel was in a contrite mood that day because his predictions for the previous day's Queen Mother Champion Chase had been a disaster. 'Mrs Pinstripe is in the kitchen as we speak,' said Colonel Pinstripe in this fruity upperclass accent, 'baking me an enormous Ilumble pie, of which I shall be consuming a very large slice in due course.' Colonel Pinstripe had evidently been drinking heavily. His tip for each race was prefaced by rambling, occasionally incoherent digressions. Before we got to hear his prediction for the Gold Cup we had to hear a lengthy account of how 'Mr Fox' had managed to steal yet another one of his guinea fowl. Then we heard a whispered account, in case Mrs Pinstripe was listening from the kitchen, about his and Mrs Pinstripe's sexual incompatibility. Then he confessed to the uncontrollable desire that comes over him whenever he sees the wife of the Irish trainer Willie Mullins. 'What I wouldn't give for a gallop on her!' he said. 'What an absolute peach! And with hindquarters like those, gentlemen, I reckon she's a stayer!' He was shouting now. His desire for Willy Mullins's wife had got the better of him, and Mrs Pinstripe, if she was listening, could think what she liked.
For the Gold Cup, Colonel Pinstripe couldn't imagine anything beating Best Mate and, more crucially, neither could Mrs Pinstripe, who, he candidly admitted, was a far better tipster than he was. But for those of us wanting a nice little each-way flutter, Colonel Pinstripe's big race recommendation was Harbour Pilot. `Har-bour Pi-lot,' he said again, carefully enunciating the name for the benefit of listeners who were as drunk as he was.
Right. Harbour Pilot. Gold Cup. I determined to make my way out of the tents, through the corporate village, past the executive Portakabins and get a place on the rails for that one. No good going to the races and being drunk in your tent all day like Noah. There was a convenient and most convivial bar right next to our Berber encampment, so I popped in there for one, and had a further one in the even more convivial bar next door to that. Then I came across a row of ladies sitting behind a desk who were taking bets. This was the Tote. I stepped up to the nearest lady, whose name was Jean, opened my mouth to speak, but my mind went blank. What the hell was the name of that each-way horse that Colonel Pinstripe had recommended? I looked at Jean. Jean looked at me. 'Yes?' she said. 'Can I help?' Then it came to me. I remembered the name. Tibour Harlot, I said. `Fivepoundseachway.'
If Harbour Pilot had won the Gold Cup by ten lengths it wouldn't have mattered because I lost the betting slip immediately. Also, I had problems getting back into our encampment because my identification tag had dropped off somewhere. Then I realised I'd lost my hat. And to cap it all, I couldn't find the car afterwards. But I was there. Oh yes! I was there!
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