Doing a bet

Strange things happen in blogland. Just yesterday evening I was one of many to respond to her Ladyship’s throwaway question as to what would you do if you were the opposite sex for a week? On her recommendation I ended up reading JC Skinner’s classic post on gambling. Read it. It will open your eyes, and perhaps close your wallet.

I grew up in an area where gambling was part of everyday life. It was never called gambling. It was doing a bet. And everyone did a bet. And nearly always on horses. Sometimes on the dogs. But never on anything else.

Old ladies would pop into the bookies after 10 o’clock mass and do a five penny cross double. As kids we would be allowed pick a horse in the big races. Not just the Grand National. The Gold Cup, The Galway Plate, The Derby, The Arc.

Fathers would do their bets on a Saturday morning and the radio would be tuned in that evening for the results. It was just something fathers did. To us it was as much part of the routine as family walks on Sundays when mothers carried coats in case it rained and fathers carried transistor radios so we could get the match.

We grew up with horses. Many of us, myself included, sat on a horse before a bicycle. Horses were part and parcel of everyday life. On meeting neighbours on those Sunday walks, the conversation would be about the weather, the horses and the GAA. In that order.

Punchestown, Cheltenham, Fairyhouse and The Thyestes marked annual occasions in the same way Christmas, Easter and Hallow’een did. Farmers would aim to get the spring corn sown before Punchestown. So-and-so didn’t die in March the previous year - It was during Cheltenham.

We loved horses. The very first picture of me as a baby was taken at Punchestown in ‘66. I was 12 when I was first allowed to go to that festival on my own. I would stand at the rails, as close as I dared, sometimes getting splattered with the muck thrown up as the horses pounded past, the ground shaking, the jockeys shouting abuse at each other and I would add my cheers to the roar of the crowd behind me in the stands.

With that love of horses came the love of doing a bet. They went hand in hand. But because we grew up with both we learned to respect them equally. To keep a tight rein of both horse and wallet. Getting to ride-out a horse or having a bet on it was a phenomenal thrill but you’d never expect to make money on either. The trainers never paid for your work and the bookies seldom did.

I will be doing a bet each day of the Cheltenham festival. Gambling if you want to call it that. I still don’t. But I have set my budget at €20 per day and will not go over it. €80 is what I can afford to lose and I expect to lose it all. If I have just €5 left at the end of the week it will be a bonus. But either way I will be enjoying four days of the very best National Hunt racing the sport has to offer. As the catholic priest, Fr. Breen, when interviewed on RTE last night put it: “Cheltenham is the Mecca”.