I know. I'm plagiarising myself. I've used this song title before but it seems apt today and it's a truly fantastic tune. In fact, I do remember mentioning to my wife (at that point "future" wife) that there were a number of songs that, if a girl said she couldn't stand, then it would be the end of the relationship. This is one of them. I seem to remember "She Sells Sanctuary" was another and, very possibly "She Bangs The Drums". And the film "Mars Attacks". I'm a lot more tolerant now- I've dropped Mars Attacks. Fortunately my, now, wife got the song tricast up but I'm still not convinced she's over the trauma of seeing childhood crush, Michael J Fox, get unceremoniously disintegrated in the first reel.
Hamilton was a slight punt as, on the face of it, this was likely to be the quietest of the meetings on the CairnBet slate there. The weather was nearly as kind as the golf had been and this blog wouldn't be complete without a brief summary of the morning's battle, especially as we were joined by Steve who was professing to anyone who would listen that he was unlikely to break 100. A "six point game" ensued (look it up if you're bored) between Pinno, Steve and yours truly. After 9 Steve, obviously, had a handy lead and I was 4th in a 3 runner. After 8 back 9 holes of tedious par grinding we stood on 18 with all results possible, Me 35, Steve 34, Pinno 33 and no shots in play. After one swing of the club it was a case of "and then there were two" as Pinno hit a truly enormous drive and possibly hit the guy putting down the tarmac on Golf Course Road. A reload led to a 300 yard beauty but by then the damage was done. As anyone who has seen this phenomenon in golf before it takes a monumental amount of willpower to avoid the obvious. My head was full of "don't say it, don't say it, for God's Sake DON'T SAY IT" whilst the mouth won the power struggle with "you should've done that first time mate". Steve was left with little prospect of finding the green and the yelp that accompanied his attempted draw that started low and left and went further gave me further encouragement until it missed everything, thick forest, heather regeneration areas, 3 grazing deer and a startled rabbit to leave him in the open facing a difficult flop shot but not as hard as being buried in Calluna Vulgaris up the arse end of a tree. A sweetly struck 9 iron put me on the front of the green but and 8 was probably the right choice and 35 feet up the hill with a ton of right to left brought 3 putt into the calculations. Pinno was also back in the calculations when it appeared, for just a moment, that his wedge may very well dive straight in for an inconceivable 2 with the 2nd ball but it was a hair long. Steve flopped to 6 feet but I rolled up to 6 inches and hands were shook.
1 ) The first race is always the quietest. A truism that is as absolute as bookmakers always forget the short heads they win on. The first race of an evening meeting is doubly quiet and the question is always how many races before it gets going. If at all. We often have "normal" books at Hamilton and this one didn't disappoint in that regard. Top two in for close to max and we got off to a relatively decent start with Astapor. But we're bookies aren't we? We still grumbled. "You never get them beat when it's busy do you?"
2) A little busier but still not quite at the "workable" level. 3 losers from 5 and we were never in it and today's choose your liability stakes resulted in Up The Clarets being marginally less worse than Kiss Me My Love. As you know, bookmakers like numbers not names. We spend the first 4 races patiently asking for the number when a name is requested, even though we know the number. We look quizzically at a board of only 5 runners as if we can't find it anywhere. It pays dividends later on when we finally programme the right way to ask for a bet into punters' minds. Kiss Me My Love gave us the opportunity for a bit of freeform riffing though, as I took each and every opportunity to thank them for the offer but I'd have to politely decline.
It was still quiet enough to run a little bit of a book on how long before the rather inebriated young man found himself face down in the turf. He was already desperately clinging on to the trackside rail at a body angle I've not been able to knowingly achieve since the 90s. George suggested 2/5 before race 4 which looked incredibly generous and we had a virtual 50 quid with him.
3) We were finally busy enough to consider the term "workable" and possibly a bit better. Like Forest and VAR we've been feeling that we've been on the wrong end of an awful lot of stuff for what feels like an awful lot of meetings on the run, though we've resisted the urge to enlist the services of former Saudi head of refs and current Gladiators shouter Mark Clattenburg. We laid Iris Dancer and Rock Opera, we barely laid Sacred Falls which cruised up along side Iris Dancer and then hit 1/20 or so in running as it went past. Iris had a steely look in its eye though and battle ensued to the post. Our body appeared to win but Iris's head was down at, for us, the wrong time and we suffered a truly inconceivable loss when a semi jackpot appeared to be inevitable See that bit about bookmakers moaning? We went full bhuna here. We were behind.
We are fairly phlegmatic when we lose. There is often a short term joint kick and a yelp of frustration but we are very quick to get back in the saddle when the next race goes up and we never dwell. But, as Pinno observed earlier in the day, when you're on a run when everything seems against you, you wonder if it'll ever turn. Though he may have been talking about the golf.
In better news we picked up our virtual 20 quid as, in the tussle between gravity and plastic fencing, gravity inevitably won and our drunken chap was in the foetal position eliciting a snore. Wouldn't want to be part of that headache in the morning.
4) The increase in betting continued at steady pace and we, again, had the top two in the book as losers. Capital Theory led and our best winner, Geremia looked doomed out the back after racing keenly and was already being pushed along coming down the hill. But then the cruise control took over and it hit 1/20 as it eased past the field and drew alongside the favourite. We'd read this book before- many times over the past couple of months, including the previous race, but this time we were not to be denied and we were back in the black.
5) Another increased take and our "straight bat" reputation was further enhanced here as, yet again, we stood the top two in the market for the max but stuck a couple of rags in as well to make it a bit more spicy. Fortunately neither of them were the winner Ledger to give us a jackpot. We were in a state of mild shock.
6) And the gifts kept on giving. You guessed it, top two in the market in again and 3rd fav Redondo gave us a win that, whilst not as eye catching as the previous two, was still in the "solid to good" range and we were already ahead of what was a very nice result yesterday at Perth.
7) And so to the end of the card as we know it. And the best betting heat of the lot. But did we feel fine? Regular readers will know we don't claim to have a liability that will make your eyes water but we think it's a respectable one and we stick to it. We also don't like to "lock up" a winning day in the last just because it's the, err, last. In the same way that we don't go chasing above our liability if we're losing. So, again, we had maxes at the top of the market plus the drifting Bernie The Bear and enjoyed our least stressful race of the day as, from a fair way out as only Mr Trevor (jackpot) and Monsieur Patat (skinner and, therefore jackpot +++ max) looked the only winners and there was to be no late scare as the anglicised Mr Potato gave us a dream. I assume it's "Mr Potato" but a quick Google search gives "Mr International Series of Conferences on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling" was the other possible option. I'm going with the spud.
And there you have it. Normal books, great results, and a cracking win that, in terms of percentage of take, was as good as we'd had for a year. I've said it before, we don't do karma or superstition or luck, we do balance of probabilities and today the balance favoured us in spades.
That's us now until Ladies Day at Kelso. Until then...
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