Roving Reports: Pointless
“The road to the Superbowl is long, and pointless.”
The Simpsons fans among you will recognize this line from the said Superbowl episode where various misdemeanors happen, including Homer having fake tickets (which appear to be printed on crackers), then getting locked up in Superbowl jail, getting busted out by Dolly Parton (no pun intended) and finally ending up in the winning team’s locker room, writes David Massey.
There’s been no winning team at Fakenham on my last two visits over the past few weeks, I can tell you, but the road there has indeed seemed both long, and as it turned out, pointless.
Let me start by saying I’m certainly not knocking Fakenham at all, a track I’ve extolled the virtues of on many an occasion, but circumstances have made things difficult this autumn. (It isn’t winter until December, whatever the weather feels like.)
Fakenham’s first meeting took place at the very beginning of November and, filled with the joys that lay ahead, was picked up at 9.30am from Bingham, midway between Nottingham and Grantham, for my lift to the track. The same old routine ensued on the way there; a McDs’breakfast at Long Sutton, plenty of football and racing chat with driver Daren, and of course the Radio 2 10.30 music quiz. Not Popmaster any more though, not since Ken Bruce moved to pastures new, but the lesser imitation Ten To The Top. Daren used to get a six-point start on Popmaster; not any more he doesn’t, with the new quiz far more random given the incremental scoring system.
So far so good then. All very familiar and all’s well as we reach the track in plenty of time. The weather forecast doesn’t look as good as it did earlier, with some hefty showers now forecast around racetime. We’ll deal with it as we have to if it comes.
In the meantime, a visit to the home-made cake stall is obligatory; two slices of lemon drizzle (one for the wife, before you accuse me of having them both) and a tremendous sausage roll to go with my lunch. This is what courses are missing.
I’m with the S&D firm, called in to work the rails at the last minute as business is expected to be good for the first fixture of the year. We get betting an hour beforehand and as ever, it’s slow to begin with. Then, a spaceship appears overhead.
Well, it feels a bit like that scene in Independence Day when the aliens arrive on Earth and it all goes very dark, but it is nothing more than a massive black cloud, which right now, is worse. It envelops the track and everybody dives for their wet weather gear. Sadly, I’m too late. The rain comes in very quickly, the wind whips up and the rain is hitting me horizontally as I try desperately to get the waterproofs on. By the time I do, my trousers underneath are soaked, and this is also a bad time to discover a hole in your left boot. I get back on the joint but it’s pointless; there’s nobody in front of me as everyone has run for cover.
By the way, the bookmaker’s umbrella - the most pointless invention since somebody came up with the idea of those “Baby On Board” car stickers you put in the back window. (Well, I was going to ram you, but now I know you’ve a baby in the back seat... To be fair here, if I see one that says “Show Cats In Transit” it does make me want to give it a little nudge. Just to keep the felines on their toes, you understand.) Utterly useless as protection from the rain when the wind’s up. You’re as well standing there with a sieve on your head.
The rain finally abates just before the first race but it’s killed the business off. I’ve taken eight bets for the grand sum of 90 quid. As the race jumps off we try and get dried off, but at halfway a horse slips up on the bend and brings another one down. We all look at one another. This could be a very short afternoon indeed.
Post-race, it takes a consortium of jockeys and officials about five minutes to decide racing can’t go ahead after walking the track. “Like ice”, is how it’s described by one of the jockeys. Ten minutes later, the bing-bong goes, and it’s all over. Racing is abandoned.
Six hours on the road to bet on one race that the favourite wins, and staff all have to be paid regardless. It isn’t a good afternoon to be a Fakenham on-course bookmaker.
Undaunted by this sorry episode, the call once again came in on Monday of this week to work at the track Tuesday. It’s a Greene King Day at Fakenham, and the Bury St Edmunds-based brewery often give out loads of free tickets for these days, resulting in a good crowd that have a bet. I’m on the firm again.
An earlier start time means a 6.50am alarm call and an 8.30am pick up at Bingham. Traffic is bad though and we set off ten minutes late. Indeed, we’re already debating whether we have time for a McD’s within a few miles of setting off, with a slow-moving tractor not helping the situation; the pick for pitches is 11.10am, and Google Maps is currently forecasting our arrival at 10.50am. That doesn’t leave you a lot of wriggle room if you get caught behind an articulated lorry or farm vehicle, which is almost always 1.01 in the run in north Norfolk.
However, man must eat, and so a swift drive-thru is required. You can imagine our joy when the car in front of us gets his food, yet doesn’t drive off; instead a woman darts out the passenger side to use the facilities inside, but rather than park up, the car does not move from the food window. I’m just about to get out and politely enquire if he wouldn’t mind kindly sodding off as we’re in a rush, when he finally moves off. 10.56 sez Google Maps. Squeaky bum time.
Delighted to say that for the rest of the journey we encounter little traffic and get there at 10.47 thanks to Daren’s judicious decision making at roundabouts. Amazing how much time you can make up by knowing which lane you should be in.
I’m with S&D again, on the rails, working Pitch 3 which is the least attractive of the four (end picks 1 and 4 best, then 2, then mine) and whilst the weather is at least dry, if cold, there don’t appear to be many people about….
I will not bore you with the details of the afternoon. All you need to know is this - seven races, over which I took less than seventy bets, and bar a £200 wager on Pretending in the fifth, the biggest bet I took all day was forty quid. It felt like a very long afternoon and reports of a big crowd had been greatly exaggerated. Worse still, the cake stall was absent.
The next fixture at Fakenham is their Christmas one, on the 19th. I think I might wear my Christmas jumper - the one that says “BAH HUMBUG” across the front - for that one…
- DM
Fakenham in Lincolnshire ? – Try Norfolk – put the sat nav on and Daren might get you there even quicker. Great read
Oops, sorry! Amended now :-/
Matt