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Graeme – ha-ha!
Bob Wharton – you have every right to dislike it. Good luck to you. You are on far more dodgy ground when you allude to cliches. I did ask you what these cliches are but you have declined to reveal them. I’m curious, you see, because as far as I know English literature is almost devoid of writing about betting shops, so I need you to tell me where all these cliches have been aired before. Being the eloquent and incisive literary critic you are, you ought be able to tell me.
One final question, do you come from Yorkshire?
Cheers!
Thanks, Monksfield.
I should add a final thought in reply to Mr Wharton: the piece was journalism, not fiction (Mr Wharton seemed to have the idea that it was supposed to be a functioning piece of popular fiction, with a strong narrative drive and a twist in the tale), offered as a ‘by the way’, a mere side-bar column, nothing more.
We journalists have a terrible and vain impulse to inflict our writing on the world. See George Orwell’s essay ‘Why I Write’ for the most honest explanation of why we do it.
We got there in the end:
A roundabout way of saying that you like me dislike rude shop staff.You’d say at the end of Hamlet: ‘we got there in the end – man kills his uncle cos he killed his father.’ Tip: you don’t like reading, so don’t keep doing it.
Worthwhile, cliche free
,
And the cliches were?
Can’t help thinking that rude customers are an integral part of the cycle of decline in basic good manners though.
I hold my hands up here – when I wrote it I thought readers would notice that I’d said at the top of the piece that the man had driven his custom away – including me – through rudeness. Dunno about you, Bob, but I stop being civil when people are repeatedly rude to me. You’re not from Yorkshire are you?
It’s not ‘too hard to win’ but it does require hard work to win and always has done.
Of course. But I approach these debates in the knowledge that the general public has a fading interest in gambling on Flat racing and that high street bookies’ takings on these events are in freefall. Unless you are an anorak or obsessive then it is most definitely too hard to win and with other gambling opportunities available, ones that give the gambler the psychological illusion of having more control over it, people drift away.
It doesn’t matter whether the anoraks and obsessives win; what matters in regard to the future of the sport is what the mass of punters do, and the percentages say they are getting bored with losing on horses and thus gambling on other things. They won’t accept it as a ‘bit of fun’ because losing all the time isn’t fun. The ‘bit of fun’ factor is the National and perhaps the Derby. So they ‘go and do something else with their time’, but in ever larger numbers. You may have seen something about this in the sporting press… I know a few betting shop managers and they all say the same thing: their area managers are not interested in racing, they’re interested in the gambling machines.Old guys in betting shops do win sometimes. I saw one win eleven grand off a 10p yankee a few months ago. But he’d been coming in and doing that 10p yankee every day since Callaghan was in office. Here’s the wonderful part: the day after his big win, he came in at the same time and put on his 10p yankee, just like normal. Every dog has its day, or so I’d like to think.
Me, I like racing. I’m not slagging it off, merely making objective criticisms that are obvious. Aesthetically speaking, it is the greatest sport in the world and at its best one of the most exciting. I’m pretty addicted to it. But it’s still too hard to win.
It is hardly surprising if people shun racing as a betting medium when the sport’s trade paper implies – wrongly – that the take-out is comparable to The Lottery.
Agreed. It is also no surprise to find that people shun racing when there’s other ways of winning and losing that are not so exasperating. It’s too hard to win, simple as that; and as a betting medium it’s going to suffer because of that and the overweening greed of bookmakers involved in it. I see old guys in betting shops who are on the FOBTs who don’t bother with racing anymore on the grounds that it’s had too much out of them for too little return. It’s sad but inevitable.
First I heard was when I bought the Post Sunday morning and it made me cry – what a terrible thing. By the looks of the Telegraph report it was some drunken prick who got turned away from their party. The man arrested and bailed for it also tried to get in and save people, whether as an alibis or out of remorseful panic is unknown. I too hope he gets the full weight of the law thrown at him, though that doesn’t mean much these days.
The less the BBC covers racing, the less we’ll see of her; which is a shame, because she’s an intelligent and perceptive presenter.
I used to enjoy those Kempton night meetings, used to pick up a bit on them, even had some fat doubles somehow. But when I see Kempton in the bookies I just think, yeah, maybe it’s time those flats were built on it, because that’s more useful than the bookies’ retirement scheme it is at present. Lingfield all-weather pricks me off as well.
…no mention of the computer system that was **** and drove people bananas with crashes; the vulgarian editor; the insanely pedantic old timers from ‘the Life’; the egos; the banalizing (can i use that word) of the sport with dreary and ‘safe’ opinions; the terror of libel law the ignorance of it; the poor communications and man management; the headlines that seemed to have any spark of interest strangled from them…
I found myself looking forward to the jumps season last year as well. I was soon pricked off with it – the Festival excepted – and praying for the Flat. Now I’m sick to death of the Flat and ready for lose my money on the jumps again. It’s the human condition where racing’s concerned, for me anyway.
‘Gambling is an exciting way of making yourself depressed’ – Simon Barnes
