My Aunt Em took the bets to Ern, the bookmakers’ runner who doubled as a bus inspector. Johnny Denton should have been a riverboat gambler with a name like that, but he was the bookmaker on Belmont Road, Southampton, a few doors down from film director Ken Russell’s house when Ken was a boy.
Shane was showing at the Palladium and Aunt Em said it would be quiet just before Christmas. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had already seen it, in fact I never have the heart for something like that, but I didn’t mind seeing it again and still don’t. “No, Joey, I gotta move on,” is something I’ve wanted to say my whole life, but I’ve never arranged for a saloon bar full of vengeful badhats. Of course I’ve known a few and many sedans, but never both at the same time.
There was Christmas around that time when my working class parents bought me some modern toys. Within half an hour I asked my father to play rummy and I see now how disappointed they must have been, even though I had unknowingly marked their card. No one ever asks me ‘technical’ questions – you know, structures, nuts, bolts etc – because they understand my shyness, although I have changed a tire on the way to Sir Mark Prescott. I did a damn good job with it too, and my concerns about it falling were completely unfounded.
I write too much about the past, I know, but the fact is I’m adrift in a world where the latest events on Love Island are more important to most people than the fate that befalls King Lear, always assuming they’ve ever heard of him. As for events across the pond, the only point I’ll make about an unspeakable narcissist is that he seems to be “reaching” millions of followers, whose social equivalents lined the harbor over a hundred years ago and gave their approval to Dickens’ works, even demanding the next one when he paid a brief visit.
What I’m saying is that I find it difficult to write for a modern audience. When I think of recent Christmases, I immediately think of Bill O’Gorman and his daughter Emma’s victory with African Chimes on a bitterly cold day in Lingfield. The AW was still a novelty at the time, but so many years have passed that many people are reluctant to believe that there were obstacle races for a while, until the number of accidents led to their demise.
It was around this time that spread betting became the latest ‘big thing’ and I vividly remember from my days as Martin Pipe’s ‘ghost’ the morning he kept a straight face and said he didn’t ‘get it’. Well, I’m not as green as I look, as my mother would have said. Martin had Richard Dunwoody as stable jockey at the time and if we use buying or selling distances as an example, he could have rebelled. But it wasn’t long before stock market betting took over and there would be little point in writing about spread betting now.
Does King George mean a lot to me? Yeah, sort of, but the 1984 race will probably stick in my memory for a lot longer than anything that happens this year. (I may have said something at this point about the contrasting price of the main racing paper, but I’ll let it go.)
I have known Colin Brown for 42 years now, from the day John Francome and Burrough Hill Lad stepped out of Combs Ditch in a thrilling finish to the big race, through to September this year when Colin again hosted the meeting in Brighton where I sponsor my race of 30 years. He’s just a great guy, with no side to him at all, and no bitterness about his own role in the early Desert Orchid days that has been forgotten by many.
Everything about that day in 1984 was special. The meetings in the west of the country were covered in snow or ice when I drove up from Cornwall, but Kempton survived. And then, as darkness fell, you’ve never seen London like this before – the golden lights at Earl’s Court, the dead easy Boxing Night ride across town to Hampstead, the steep hill to the Holly Bush, where I think Kingsley Amis wrote much of Lucky Jim.
In those days you were spoiled for choice in Hampstead: the Horse & Groom (long gone) with its magnificent Young’s Special or the Flask (which is still there) on Flask Walk. Al Alvarez, poet, philosopher and poker player, and regular presenter on BBC Rdio 4, once told me he bought his house for £45,000. “Yes, I made my move when Cromwell let the Jews back in!” he smiled.
It was all very nice, a Christmas that leaned towards the past, and that is where I belong. Lately I’ve started to question the raison d’être of my own material. To take an arbitrary example, and to return to the abandoned meetings, one of these was Wincanton.
I would have been very tempted to mention Tom Fort’s wonderful book on the A303, which has a lot about Stonehenge and places where he relaxed after a day of cycling or walking. Ilchester and its little bridge are particular favorites, as is the pub where he sank a few pints of excellent Great Bustard bitters, which is brewed by Stonehenge Ales and has an alcohol content of just under 4.8%.
You might think that the Great Bustard is a bit weak, because it lays its eggs in the vast open spaces around Stonehenge, losing about eighty percent of them to foxes. She’d probably send you away and ask where else she could go – on top of the rocks perhaps? – while also wondering when was the last time a bitter was named after you…..
Anyway, have a great month, which I don’t want to think of as the December of life. And with Christmas in mind, if you have a friend who is particularly interested in racing, you might mention recent Booker Prize winner David Szalay, whose previous book Spring contains a detailed account of an attempted coup through Fakenham and Fontwell.
Ian Carnaby’s books can be purchased on our website by clicking here
#Holly #tops #memorable #day #Marten #Julian