Tipping my Father

July 28th 2002

Yesterday I went to see England play India at Lords. It was the first
time I had been to see a test match and I had a great time there. 4 of
us turned up just after 11am laden with wine, pork pies, and scotch
eggs, crisps and sandwiches. Much wine was drunk; many pork pies
consumed and I had several attacks of hiccups.

One of my companions was Dan; he's a betting tipster, writing a
syndicated column in around 20 local papers. He was excited by the big
race of the day, the King George VI, so I asked him for a tip. He told
me to back a horse each way, I can't remember the name of the horse
now, but I put a fiver on the nose, and returned to the cricket.

I decided to ring my Dad, not something I do a lot as he is crap on the
phone, he usually just hands it over to mum after asking if I'm OK.
This time I had a conversation. My dad is Irish old-style, now that
he's retired, he drinks, he gambles ... that's it.

When I was a kid, he would come in from work, put his donkey jacket on
a hook and settle down in front of the telly. I would get his daily
mirror out of his jacket pocket; it was always folded over to the
racing page. Dan told me that the mirror is a real horse racing paper.
At first I always thought the racing was on the front page, since the
paper was always folded that way when I saw it.

I told Dad who to back, he knew about the horse anyway and had included
it in a Yankee. My Dad always bets in this way, Dan tried to explain it
to me, I think it's 11 separate bets, doubles, trebles, but I'd lost
interest in his explanation before he reached the end.

I returned my attention to the cricket, it was a good day for England
and we sat back and drank some more wine, enjoyed the sun. I wasn't
having a good day in the field as the reaction to all the wine and bad
food had made me nauseous. I managed to surreptitiously vomit twice
into a Tesco carrier bag. I then filled it up with rubbish and handed
it to Dan to put in a bin. I don't know why, but I felt a lot better
after being sick and getting someone else to get rid of my sick bag,
made me feel even better.

The horse came in third; I should have backed it each way, as Dan
had.

The cricket ended at about 7.pm, I reflected on my day, spent ?38 on
the ticket, lost ?5 on a horse, had been sick (twice) in a carrier bag,
had enjoyed some great cricket, wine, pork pies and scotch eggs. Not a
bad Saturday.