Newcastle Plate Day 27/6/26 - Press The Buzzer

Due to a not unreasonable objection to 5am alarm calls we travelled south on Friday night and treated ourselves to a meal and a couple of beers and that's where the confusion set in. Simon was already in the bar (of course) and Matthew's body is a temple so he was on water. I ordered a pint and proffered my card in way of payment. Out came a big green button from behind the bar. Now, I've lived in rural Perthshire for over 20 years and we don't really have these new fangled way of doing things but, you know, we were in the metropolis now so maybe we'd get the Big Button Card Machine up North in years to come. No slot and no obvious contactless section either so I manfully waved the card at the big, green button to no avail. The barman smiled indulgently, Simon laughed uproariously, I turned the button round to see if payment could be made at the rear. No joy. "Press it" was the cry. Goodness, I thought, technology has moved on! Maybe they were taking my money by hypnosis. Turns out it was a discount button. 10% off if you're wondering. Regular card machine then came out for payment and I must confess I was mildly disappointed, but about 60p better off.

With a fantastic weather forecast we put both pitches in the old silver ring in front of the lawns, near a large bar with food stalls directly behind us. We even got one of them on a corner with a gap where the hordes of folk would, no doubt, gravitate towards and unquestionably bet with us. The pitch decisions ranged from "poor" to "dreadful" and we suffered buyer's regret for the rest of the day.

1) Stuck 3 in, Caviar Cowboy, Yorkshire and Supido plus fav Bobby Bennu for a 0-0 and got full reward with best result in book, Room Service and virtually skinned places to give us a dream start.

2) 2 bogeys here, favourite Diligent Harry plus Marvelman who finished 2nd but only eked out a smallish win on Paborus which our pitch laid relentlessly whilst Steve and Simon's pitch never laid at all. Remarkable what a difference 10 feet of tarmac makes. Places were fantastic again though and we were nicely placed after 2.

3) No joy here though, as chances galore turned into loss on 2nd favourite BelieveItAndUCan which hit a big price in running. We didn't believe it when it got up to win. A step backwards.

4) And not the result for us you may have expected on a double figure priced winner in the big race. 2nd and 3rd were jackpots, the winner somewhat more modest. Paddled the last two races.

5) Despite sticking the jolly, Power Fizz, it was our other, albeit smaller, bogey, Tuco Salamanca, who prevailed and we'd barely moved in either direction overall for about 90 minutes.

6) Small loser Barnaby Rudge turned into bigger loser when Taj Mahal Palace came out with no rule 4. Essentially back to where we were after race 1. Frustration reigned supreme and it was hard to find a positive as we were covering expenses only but no wages in sight.

7) We often have a bookend book. Today we had a bookend meeting. After wading through treacle both in terms of bets and results we took our biggest turnover of the day, shoved the jolly Big Win for the max and cashed in, in spades, on near skinner and absolute jackpot Elemental Eye. Big loss for fav backers, finally we eyed a big win after 3 hours of being mired in metaphorical quicksand.

A winning day in the end, though still tinged with disappointment overall on a long hard day but a jackpot in the last always makes the (4 hour in this case) journey home just that little bit more pleasant.

Perth on Thursday likely our next destination though it is filed under "weather and filed size dependent" so not guaranteed. Until then (probably)...