A wise man, well actually a bloke on Twitter at the weekend, noted that sport can be absolutely rubbish, but for sport to hit the highs you have to experience the lows. Last weekend was pretty dispiriting on the sport front. Ashes washed out, The Open, whilst not detracting from a phenomenal performance from Brian Harman, was a non event from a competitiveness point of view, and then there was Cartmel.
We were travelling back from holiday on Friday and my wonderful, and long suffering, wife was poring over the Saturday Cartmel forecast all the way home from Hull. I would, at this stage, point out that I did not take my wife and kids to Hull on holiday though I'm sure it is a marvellous place. Anyway, I digress. Several phone calls to Steve later and we decided that, based on the forecast, it was highly unlikely to be on. There was no break in the rain for 100 miles in any direction. Cartmel is quite expensive for us, there are always digs to pay for and the "dead" Sunday in the middle makes logistics more difficult than usual. The forecast was set fair for Monday and Sunday was, at that stage, sunshine and showers. Our digs agreed to move our booking to Sunday night and we were going to skip the Saturday, which was going to be abandoned anyway, to go on the Monday which was going to be fantastic as the ground should have recovered in time and all of those people who didn't go on Saturday would switch to the Monday. As we now know, the Met Office had the same level of accuracy on Saturday as Tommy Fleetwood's putter. The heavy rain never arrived, the fixture was touch and go but managed to get on, though one of the ground staff mentioned they'd be lucky to get through a couple of races. Sunday's sunshine and showers became torrential rain from dawn to dusk, Monday was abandoned 2 hours before the leaders went out on Sunday at Hoylake and we agreed with our Twitter guru that sport can be rubbish.
So were we to experience the highs at Musselburgh family fun day to compensate for the weekend misery?
1) Family Fun Days rely on volume as bet size is, of course, tiny- often around an average of a fiver. Race 1 we were cautiously optimistic as we did a rather splendid 114 bets. We were on for a new record for a family fun day, sadly our new record was "lowest ever average bet size" as we clocked in at a mighty £4.10 per bet. Still, 1st races are usually the slowest and the ice cream continued to have a truly ginormous queue snaking back about a furlong. We stood the 3 rags for the max plus a half liability on Cabinet Maker and ended up keeping half of what we took on Odd Venture. Now if we can just repeat that percentage on The Gold Cup or The Grand National...
2) Optimism tempered somewhat as we slipped back to 75 bets and the bet size remained resolutely sub fiver. Two rags again the losers (out of 5) and we snuck a win on the absolutely smashed up jolly Capital Guarantee which more than halved in price. Substantial wins are hard to come by, though, when you're taking 300 quid a race. The ice cream van queue was getting longer and the fairground collectively squealed.
3) NEW RECORD ALERT. Bet size hit £3.50 but bet numbers didn't increase. Optimism dissipated and mild pessimism setting in. Our "half of what we take" liability was barely a liability at all and potential winners were equally miniscule. We stood two in the middle, we wanted Vindabola which was, by all accounts, heavily supported by connections half a mile away on the rails pitches but steadfastly refused to leave the stalls. We won coppers on Yaaser. The ice cream queue was now in danger of being longer than the next race.
4) 3 more losers of the small variety dotted liberally throughout the book. One of them was touched off by one of our best winners, Indication Spirit. "Best" being a relative term when bet sizes were squeezed to £3.17 a pop. Another new record. Just like the ice cream queue which was approaching Leith. We were in the wrong job.
5) Top 4 in the market were losers for fish suppers. Bottom 6 were winners for a chicken madras, some of them with onion bhajis thrown in. The turnover reduced for the 5th race running and we were all googling "2nd hand ice cream vans". We won the non bhaji option on Texas Man
6) And then it rained and everyone went home. Apart from the ice cream queue which was getting longer. We took 93 quid. Another new record. We won 23 quid on the jolly.
Despite what I've written above (with tongue firmly in cheek) I am a big fan of Family Fun Days. Not from a bookmaking perspective- we try them every so often with similar results every time then have another few years off. However, there was a stack of people there and they all seemed to be having a great time and they will be the long term future of the sport, assuming the BHA want a long term live future for the sport. Many of the parents will, hopefully, come again to a regular fixture or two. And I can say this from first hand experience as my delightful wife and my occasionally delightful kids were in attendance for this fixture along with a couple of friends to ensure it was a bicker free day. And they absolutely loved it. They'll be back next year as will I, though in a parental rather than a bookmaking capacity. At the end of the day, no harm done and we got a wage from a tiny take which is more than we should.
And the secret of the ice cream man? Free ice creams all day as we found out when my kids rocked up with one at the end. "They still took more than us" as next door observed.
Onwards to Newcastle Ladies Day with the obligatory bookmakers' "time of first fight" sweep. I'm dialled in for 11:47. I'm probably a bit late.
Until then...
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