A Day at the Races

Bish's Precis

- The only thing swankier than a Morning Suit is the person you hire it from
- I won £40, but nothing on Beaver Patrol
- Beware of Old Ducks. They are shifty
- There's nothing quite like making a big entrance to a pub
- "One of each thanks"

Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend Royal Ascot. In the Royal Enclosure no less.

Dress is Morning Suit for these affairs, and the sea of top hats in the enclosure made for a pretty awesome sight. Getting it was a bit of an ordeal in itself. I headed to an old school hire shop in the City, where I was greeted by a few old gentlemen that had clearly been doing this all their life, and not surprisingly were immaculately dressed - matching handkerchiefs and day cravats, and the like. They called every customer "sir" - and meant it - although I'm sure there was a bit of sarcasm in their tone when they heard my Australian accent. Their trading hours were very old school too - they closed at 5:30 on Friday, were closed all Sunday, and only opened at 9:00 on Monday. This meant I left work at 4pm on Friday and didn't get in until 10:30am on Monday, but I'm sure that serves me right for working out in the sticks. Anyway, all very posh and more than a little stuffy in that place, but they know what they're doing!

The new grandstand at Ascot was only opened a couple of years ago - this was the second Royal Ascot meet it had hosted. Its an immensely impressive building - about six storeys high with vast open areas inside the stand. It's pretty impressively decked out also with all the trimmings. I knew ahead of time that Dan Barnao and his lovely girlfriend Anna were in the Royal Enclosure, but I'd forgot that more mates from Perth, Cath and Jon, were going to be there too. But we ran in to them on the day nonetheless.

The meet itself is pretty short - only 6 races, starting at 2:30pm. This was preceded by the Queen being drawn down the home straight , right past us and up to the Royal Box.

Once underway, we were all about the punting. Not that I'm knowledgeable at all about these things. I just picked some horses with reasonably short prices, but not favourites, and laid out £20 on each race. After two races I was up £40. I backed the Aussie horses in the third and feature race, the Golden Jubilee Stakes (Miss Andretti and Takeover Target), and while the short priced favourite Miss Andretti did nothing, Takeover Target still did enough for me to come out OK.

At the end of the day I was still up £40 which was great (of course, that didn't include booze, suit hire, or the cost of entry). The only race on which I didn't collect was the one where I backed a horse called Beaver Patrol (so in a way, I guess I won there too). Unfortunately the winner was Dark Missile: I'd backed the wrong innuendo.

Aside from amusing horse names, another highlight was lining up for a punt, when an old duck (a posh generously proportioned older "blonde" woman with no chin) politely asked to squeeze past Dan and I. We let her in, only to find she wanted to push infront of us in line! Bloody rude! She and I got to the desk together and I was served first, then her, with Dan next in line. I stood to the side to wait for Dan, while this old duck went through her race card booklet and asked for £2 on this, £3 on that, £2 on this and so on. After some time the bemused bookie turned to me (in full earshot of the old duck) and said "I think she's got everything covered, don't you?" I smiled then, but more was to follow. Dan looked over her shoulder, saw her race card and said to her "You realise you're looking at the wrong race on your race card, don't you?" The entire line erupted in laughter. She said something about knowing what she was doing and shuffled off. Gags.

We got on the train fairly easily and headed back to town, heading to Angel. We walked in to the Angelic - three blokes in top hats and two well dressed ladies - and the place virtually stopped. I don't think there was a single person in the place that didn't look at us. We stayed there for a few drinks and dinner (we had tapas, there were ten choices available between five of us, so I got the pleasure of looking at a menu and saying "one of each thanks", a lifelong ambition of mine).

Soon after eating Dan and Anna headed home. Cath, Jon and I remembered the looks we got as we walked in to the place. We decided it was pretty funny and said "lets do it again" - so we went to a different pub. And another. And another. It ended up being a pub crawl, all so we could recapture that first impression made by our entrance in swanky garb. Which we did. Brilliant.

It was 2am when I finally got a cab home, after about 13 hours of boozing in my morning suit. And even then the novelty of making a big entrance into a pub hadn't worn off.