Where to start the latest missive from around the tracks? Aintree would seem like an obvious start point after last week, but then again, I haven't told you about what happened at Cheltenham either, writes David Massey. So do we start there? No, I'll tell you what, let's start at Clacket Lane Services, and with Vicki rather than me, for a change.
Vicki, for those of you unaware, has been my other work partner for the last year. In fact, as she recently reminded me, it was at Aintree last year we sat down and thrashed out the idea that Trackside has become since then; so, for all I'm dreadful at remembering dates, I can remember a decent meal when I have one, and I had a very good steak that night as we discussed future world domination.
Vicki has a superb business head. I leave that side of things to her. She can negotiate contracts as if she was trying to win The Apprentice, squeeze ten pound notes out of people tighter than two coats of paint. They should send her to the Ukraine talks. Perhaps she could sort it in a week, because Fanta Man seems to be struggling to finish the job off, to use racing parlance.
However, she has her weak spots. Geography is one of them. Leicester Racecourse is "somewhere in the middle", "I didn't realise Aintree was quite so far away" - she lives near Colchester, "how the hell is it over two hours to Fakenham? It's only seventy miles!", another map-reading gem she came out with the other week. (If she read these columns, she'd know Fakenham is four hours from anywhere, as I've stated on many an occasion. More on this particular excursion later.)
These all pale into insignificance, mind, when I tell you her crowning glory. She was amazed I'd made it to Uttoxeter by 11am the other week. "Wow, how have you got there so quickly?" she exclaimed. Puzzled, I wondered what she meant, given it's barely an hour from my house. "Well....isn't Uttoxeter in Devon?". Yes, friends, she'd spirited it away from East Staffordshire, took it all the way to the bottom of the M5, gave it a new accent and thought I'd somehow driven 200-odd miles in an hour after sending her a text I was setting off sixty minutes before.
That Fakenham trip. She'd decided she wanted to try out some new make-up brands and looked for a large branch of Boots that was on her way to the Norfolk track as a stop-off. Thetford was favourite, there was what looked a very large branch on the map. And so, off she went and got to Thetford, following the sat-nav directions. When she arrived at Boots, it was indeed a huge, huge building. She'd found the Boots distribution centre on an industrial estate.
So anyway, Clacket Lane, and she's called in for a coffee and, ahem, a comfort break on the way to Ascot. Having precariously balanced her car keys on top of the toilet roll holder (this isn't going to end how you think at this point) it takes them mere seconds to fall off and onto the floor. And at the same time, slide into the cubicle next door.
You might expect them to be slid back at this point. Instead, she tells me, she can hear them being picked up and the inhabitant leaving the cubicle, footsteps suggesting she's actually walking off with the keys. Which, as it turns out, she was.
Panicking, she quickly has to get out and find the person that's waltzed off with them. But she's no idea who. They're long gone. Now what do you do? As it turns out, nothing needed to be done, as ten minutes later the key holder returns to the toilets, looking for someone that might sport a face that says "Hello! I'm an idiot that's panicking having lost my keys." She spies Vicki matching that description and gives her keys back. Turns out her neighbour thought that it must have been she that dropped the keys and thinking they were her own, took them off with her. It was only after realising they didn't open her own car that she realised what had happened, and brought them back.
All I'm saying is this. If you want someone to read a paddock laden with unraced two year olds, Vicki is your lady. Just don't let her anywhere near a map.
Oh yeah, Cheltenham. It snowed. A week before, on a Sporting Life podcast recorded in bright sunshine I'd got laughed out of the place for suggesting it might snow at Cheltenham. Nobody was laughing as we drove through heavy fluffy white showers near Evesham on the Wednesday morning and, as I walked into the press room, the Sporting Life lads actually gave me a round of applause for my prediction and a rendition of "Simply The Best", which is a standing joke with the Life lads as my final appearance on Popmaster (a good fifteen years ago now) saw me forget the name of Tina Turner's mega-worldwide hit, meaning I didn't win the DAB radio, merely a Bluetooth speaker that broke within two months. Thanks for that, Ken.
A tick-box food card was introduced for the press at Cheltenham this year, seemingly to stop repeat offenders from having half a dozen lunches (you know who you are) before the first. You got your bacon roll for breakfast, tick, hot lunch, tick, and a snack in the afternoon, third and final tick. All good. At the end of the Tuesday a couple of people gave me their cards as they weren't coming back for the rest of the four days, meaning I quite literally held all the cards as far as meals went. As word got out later in the week, I had various members of the press sidling up to me, asking if I could use one of my cards to get themselves a bit of breakfast as they hadn't got one. "Here you go son, treat yourself to a sausage sandwich", I whispered, handing the golden chalice over. This must be what it feels like to be a drug dealer. I've never been so popular.
Horse racing? Yeah, we had a couple of nice winners and napping Doddiethegreat in the Press Challenge, plus sticking up Lecky Watson, saw Team Trackside finish a very respectable fourth on the week. We built on that by making Nick Rockett a bet at Aintree and now stand third overall. Long way to go (doesn't finish until Champions Day) but we're in the mix for the big prize.
Aintree. The undoubted highlight of the week was not the aforementioned Nick Rockett, nor Jonbon getting back on track, but the Yorkshire Gold teabags in the canteen. Most courses, you're lucky if you get Happy Shopper-type teabags that aren't even tea, just stuff swept up off the floor and tied up in a perforated bag; but such luxury we haven't seen for some time in a press canteen. To give you an idea of what we tend to put up with, there's one course (I won't name and shame... yet) that has tea and coffee you serve yourself with and if you turn the coffee jar upside down, the coffee usually sticks to the bottom. You don't spoon it out, you chip it out.
The racing was excellent at Aintree on the Thursday, it’s one of my favourite days of the year with its opening run of Grade 1s in a proper jumps atmosphere. Different kettle of fish on the Friday, mind. Ladies Day seemed slightly less busy but hectic nonetheless. As we stayed around the paddock area for much of the afternoon, doing what we do, we didn’t see the, er, merriment around the front but I did get a message from Vicki as she left the track. “There’s a woman lying on the floor getting her face licked by an Irish wolfhound. Also, a lot of nipples on show. I’d leave sooner rather than later if I were you.” Needless to say I packed away pretty quickly after that and made my way back to the car. Sans nipples, thankfully.
I’m back at Cheltenham for their April two-dayer as I type this and it’s freezing cold, a reminder we haven’t got shot of winter just yet. No snow, but I’m not counting any chickens…
- DM
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