.

'IS THAT AN A?'

Formerly known as ' CHECK IT AGAIN PLEASE MATE.'

R.I.P.

Old Bill Manning started betting in our shop in the early 1960s, he was already about 60 years old then, his wits were as sharp as a razor but his eyes packed up working properly in about 1990, when he started to develop cataracts.

I knew him for almost 25 years, and even though he knew my name he always called me 'mate.'

He worked every bet out to the exact penny, and if the return was under he would always say 'Check it again mate.' but not tell you how far out it was. It was never more than a dollar out, even on big returns, but if you offered him half a quid more to save doing it again, he'd say 'No thanks, I want it dead right.' All his bets were each way yankees, and if you overpaid him in the first place, due to settling at a quarter, not a fifth, you always knew as he'd put the extra change in the Barnardos box on the counter.

If I remember, it was late 1995 or early 1996, (and over the years he had some nice wins) he came in dressed as usual in his overcoat (whatever the weather) holding his walking stick that he didn't need, with a roll-up as fat as a cigar in his mouth.

This particular Saturday he was over in the corner where your own shadow goes over the form page you're trying to read. Struggling on, he was copying the horses names from the Life onto a slip, letter by letter. I could see he was having problems and asked if he was okay as the first horse race was due off soon.

'Here mate, is that an A?' he asked, so I walked out to him, looked at the horse and said.'Yes Bill, that's an A.'

He shrugged ' Cheers mate, me eyes ain''t what they used to be.'

I said for a laugh 'What did they used to be, Bill?'

He replied quick as a flash 'Blue.' and carried on writing his bet out, grinning.

He put it on and I chucked it in with the other multiples on the desk. After about 7 races had passed he had 2 winners from 2 runners, 7/2 and 5/1 I think, and as he hardly ever backed horses with double figure odds, I ignored the bet until later. About half an hour later he had got winner number 3 at 7/2.

The last horse was in the 4-50 race so I gave the bet to my boss. Firstly, because I would be settling football bets and the last race singles, and secondly, he could weigh the few quid up against any phone business on the race.

He made the same mistake as me 'only small odds' and chucked it in the pile for looking at later. Somehow, it got buried under a mass of phone bets. After the last race the boss was cheering as the favourite, beginning with the letter A, had been well beaten, and he had layed it on the phone for a nice few quid.

I said ' I suppose Bill had that jolly as well, that was his last runner, the 4-50.'

He dug it out from under the phone bets saying he had forgotten all about it.

He had a horse that started with an 'A' alright, he'd copied the first two letters correctly, then when he looked back he had copied the rest of the next horse down the card, that started with the same two letters.

It was the winner, and the SP was 100/1.

Over 2k for a 10p each way yankee.

He came in on Monday and said 'You'll never guess what I done on Saturday.'

We did.

.

A betting shop in the fulham road on a bank holiday afternoon in the nineties . A couple of opposition companies nearby had been robbed in the previous few weeks , so all the staff were on alert. The manager and cashiers all clocked a guy coming through the door, thin scruffy, with a large coat walking to the counter with obviously no interest in the racing. The manager met him at the counter screen and asked how he could help, the scruffy guy replied " you can start by giving me some money " despite his legs shaking the manager said " let's see it then " at which point the guy reaches into his coat and pulls out a ......

(LOL, I haven't got the next word or line, lost it in transit somewhere, perhaps the author will look in)

PIKEY JIM
Only ever a race by race punter, but one day he decides to have 66 x 50p sf doubles through the card at an evening dogs meeting. This was a small independent bookies & in the days before they had electronic tills & indeed betting slips. Bets were written on a slip of paper, handed over the counter & a ticket was given as a receipt, the other half of the ticket being stapled to the slip of paper.

Come the next day, Jim was waiting for the staff to open the shop. Youd never believe it but our Jim had picked all 12 winning forecasts & was confidently expecting to collect his winnings of just over 43k.

Unfortunately, instead of his expected windfall, poor Jim managed to cop for a 9 month stretch.

How he got caught.

Obviously the settler couldnt believe someone had picked every single winner & on closer inspection the ticket that was attached to the bet had 2 mysterious extra staple holes in it.

As it came out in court, Jim had got a pikey kid to hide in the toilets at the end of the afternoon racing & the staff locked up the shop with him still in there. Jim then went to the dogs, wrote down all the winners, went back to the shop & passed them through the letterbox to the kid inside. The kid then retrieved the original bet, replaced it with the new slip of paper & stapled the ticket to that. He then let himself out of an upstairs window.

Daft thing is, if he hadnt been so greedy & had just tried to claim 5 or 6 winners, he would probably have got away with it. Always makes me laugh when I think of this, ingenious idea, but how fkin dumb can you be, especially as there was a 4k limit on overnight bets.


Union Jack Boy
Fot those who dont remember the union jack it involved 9 selections in a

123
456
789

format. It paid out trebles in a bingo style. This particular bookies had a particularly wide betting slip. Union jack boy would wander in, and draw his own union jack on a betting slip, but instead of having just one selection in each box he would place 2 or 3, making perms all over the place. Writing times, names of horses, odds sometimes (they priced up every race at 9am) in tiny letters, he would always have something to return. Yes those penny trebles sure would add up. The top copy would be a mess of red pen as the poor settler had to work his way thru all the days bets. Of course as soon as the last race on his bet finished he would be at the counter waiting for his money. He justified this bet by saying he could cover a whole days horse/dog racing for under a tenner. Idiot.

Reddy Teddy

Sounds like another old rock and roller doesn`t it, but not so. Ted was given this nickname because of his love of cash, and his trademark cry, "Teddy`s got the readies" when he drew a hefty amount from the cashier, or was paid from the satchel on course - he never messed around and would lay it on thick. He was a good number of years older than me, and was an old soldier who had served in Korea during that war: 1951-53, and for many years after was a very slick operator as a chief accountant with a large company, but tried it on once too often and was instantly dismissed by his boss - by way of a recorded message. We got on very well and would often meet up on course or in a betting shop - never in the pub though; I like my pint at the bar, but he hated the pub, preferring to sit at home with his wife and watch TV over a glass or two.

Getting the sack was the worst thing that ever happened to him. He really fancied his chances of making it as a pro punter and raided his bank accounts to finance the great enterprise. Travelling around the courses, he found that the expenses were soaking up any winnings, and the cash soon dried up. Next he liquidated the assurance policies and to hell with future security. Ted now had a second bite at the cherry - his bank was back up to around 50k. He decided to abandon travelling around the country and to concentrate on telephone betting and daily visits to the betting shop.
Unfortunately he hit a bad run at the start and then, disastrously, began chasing his losses. If he had a winner he would shout so long and loud that you sometimes thought the ceiling was going to come crashing down. But winners were thin on the ground. I was present when he had his final large wager - 1,000 on the even money favourite in a hunter chase. It made a shocking blunder at the second fence and the rider did well to stay aboard, but his feet were out of the irons and all chance had gone. Ted suddenly disappeared - I guessed he was going home. Still, I went out after him to try and cheer him up a bit. There he was, with his back pressed back against the wall, eyes closed and breathing really heavily - in fact, gasping for air. I thought for a moment he was having a heart attack, but he recovered after another minute or so.

Ted was now skint - there were no more reserves of cash. He did the antiques fairs and boot sales and got rid of all the antiques and collectables he had accumulated over the years. The cash raised from the sale of these went the same way as the other monies, and as they say, he was now all washed up. There was still the house left, but thankfully it is jointly owned, and his wife is looking after things on that score. I would say with some certainty that his wife saved him from himself and complete ruin because all the signs were there that he had lost control.
Ted is now well into his seventies and he and his wife survive on pensions. He says he now gets just as much fun out of a 50p yankee bet as he did out of betting in hundreds or a thousand. Is that because he no longer has the money to bet big, or is it because he has mellowed with age? I`ll hedge my bets and say it is a bit of both.

Rob Roy

I was working in Aberdeen over twenty years ago and, if Perth races was not on, would often end up spending my few days off in a betting shop - usually Morrisons. I got to know quite a few of the regulars, including Andy, who had spent forty years as a top waiter in New York. He admitted coming back home with very little - mainly because of the American divorce laws, and a bit of a fondness for gambling. He said that he once calculated that over those forty years he had received at least 300,000 in tips, and reckoned, had he invested the tip money alone on the stock market or in property, he would have been worth at least 2 million. To me it seemed the only thing he retained was his Scottish accent.

Another regular was Rob, who I Christened, Rob Roy. He spoke in a machine gun-like staccato manner, and it was sometimes difficult to pick up everything he said. When he was talking to you, sentences usually ended with, or were punctuated by, the expression, "yer c_nt". It was yer c_nt this, yer c_nt that, all the time. If he spoke to you for three or four of minutes, that expression would come out at least a dozen times. Rob grew up in the tenement slums of Glasgow in the 1930`s, and so it was probably picked up as part of the everyday banter, just as**neys regularly intersperse their conversations with, "yer know" or, "know what I mean".

One Saturday I was standing in the betting shop reading the form, and two of the other customers began talking about Rob. Apparently about four years previously he had been made redundant and had received a big pay-off. However, he lost it all gambling - and in a very short space of time. This led to rows and eventual divorce from his wife. They sold the house and split the proceeds. Rob was doing his share in the betting shops, and apparently was down to his last couple of thousand. No wonder he had been in a bad mood the previous week - he was standing at the corner of the glass counter for most of the afternoon and would bang the glass and start effing and blinding at the manager and staff when yet another hot favourite got stuffed. They tolerated his behaviour because obviously they were coining it.

There was a shop that used to sell rolls and baps for just 1p each - they were from the supermarkets, and were one day past sell-by date. I used to go there myself - never could resist a bit of value - and with a slice of cheese and some pickle in them, they tasted as if fresh.
One day I met Rob in there. He came out with it all and told about his misfortunes and how stupid he`d been. How he once had a good redundancy pay-off, a house of his own and not a care. Now he had lost it all and was on the dole and living in a shared rented room. He asked me if he could borrow 30, which I gave him, even though my two-year contract was up in six weeks and I was heading back down south. After I handed over the money, I realised the prospect of getting it back was pretty slim; but I had done well for myself in Scotland, and wasn`t overly bothered, also I felt sad for Rob, who, apart from his shortcomings, was a decent fellow. He had also been muttering things like, "I feel like dipping somebody`s pockets". Things had got bad.

A few days days before I left Aberdeen I went into Morrisons` betting shop, and Rob was there. He had lost the previous weeks dole money in one day and told me he had been living off the penny rolls and tinned peaches for the past few days, and could I lend him a fiver to buy some fish and ***** I handed him the fiver, but just before he left the shop, spotted a dog that he had backed the previous week and said it had been unlucky in running. "It`s in Trap 6 today and will get a clear run" he confidently said. He walked up to the counter and put 3 on the dog - it came 4th. Rob walked out, then returned ten minuted later with just a bag of ***** That Trap 6 had obviously eaten the fish.

Four days later I drove out of Aberdeen, and although I`d be badly missing beautiful Perth - the racecourse and the City - I would be returning to my familiar stamping grounds of Ascot, Newbury Sandown etc. It had been a hard but very worthwhile two years, and I felt good. It could sometimes be tough being an Englishman working up there (perhaps relations are better now), and, apart from a couple of nasty incidents, I got on ok.
I havn`t since returned to see "the lights of old Aberdeen" but shall do so one day when I revisit Perth. I suppose I`ll then have to call into the betting shops and see if I can find Rob. Perhaps he`ll be having a good day and return my 35.
If he`s having a really good day, I`ll tell him that the loan was linked to the annual rate of inflation - err, that`s twenty three years at an average of 6%......that`s.........

Has there ever been a sitcom set in a bookies?

With all these characters we would never run out of material.

Jack The Hat

Local wino. Three sheets to the wind daily by 11am, looked a right state too. So named for the ridiculous trilby he always wore in all weathers, despite the fact that he looked like a tramp and his clothes were filthy. Would come in my shop in various states of drunkeness to have a punt and back something in every single race. Amazingly though he would generally punt at least a bottle at a time, usually a monkey, retrieving his balled up wedge of cash from his sock where he kept it! he'd stick the slip on the counter & then disappear from sight to retrieve said cash from his sock, then dump a screwed up ball of notes on the counter for me to count out (he was always to drunk to be able to count). He'd disappear from the shop every 10 mins to go get another drink & then come back again, until he got to the stage where he couldn't so much as pick up a slip, let alone write on it, so he'd come to the counter, slur & dribble his way through what he wanted expecting you to write it down, then do the usual disappearing from sight to retrieve the ball of cash from his sock which again, he would have to shove on the counter for me to count out. He'd do all his cash & stagger out again, only to be waltzing through the front door at 10.30am the next day!


SKINTY JOHN

In a central london *******, near an office of mine in the late 90s, I got to know a young lad named Skinty John, a rail-thin black man in his late 20s. He was smart, well-spoken; I remember he loved World War I histories, and would always be lugging a thick book along with the R.Post. Anyway, his favourite line was, "I'm dead broke." He'd tell everyone within earshot, "I'm dead broke," as if it was a sudden development, though I never knew him to have more than a pound or two to his name. Anyway, if I was having an all right day, I'd slip him a pound or two, which he'd proceed to **** away on a greyhound race. He'd always bet the dogs and he'd always bet the tricasts, and always str8 up. Being a decent capper, he'd inevitably get two or even three of the dogs picked right but not in the right order.

Anyway, one Friday evening in summer, I walk in to the shop and I'm shocked to see Skinty John holding court, waving around a ludicrously fat rolled wad of cash, mostly 50s, tied with a thick rubber band. He's drunk (something I had never seen before), and he runs up to me, practically hugs me, shows off his bank wad, and proceeds to tell me that he started the day betting the first BAGs race that morning and hit four str8 tricasts, and he magically kept running it up by betting higher and higher stakes. The dog races roll on, and he's betting like a madman. There's a crowd of his soused mates around, egging him on, and he's betting the dogs as usual -- only now he's graduated to 10 and 20 pound str8 tricasts.

"This is madness," I tell him. "Take the money and go home -- now"

He shoots me one of those looks. His mates just ridicule me. The two old men behind the class just smile and shake their heads as Skinty John keeps shoving the cash through the slot.

I can't bear to watch this lunacy and so I pick up and leave.

The next Monday, I stop in the shop late in the afternoon, and sure enough Skinty John is there, sober as a judge, studying the greyhound form. He greets me with a forlorn smile and these words, "I'm dead broke." Turns out he did his bankroll that evening, and spent the weekend in the shop, nursing his hangover and bumming 50p coins

Thanks to all these characters mentioned, their posters, and also those who never had names at the start of their posts.

The Sentry

CATWEAZEL

THE FORECASTER

The Muppet

LOTTO LADY

The Fortune Teller

HARRY THE LIAR (R.I.P.)

FRANKIES FAN

THE DISGRACE

ROBERT 'CRACKERJACK' AGIMBO.

DAMBUSTER

SMELLIE NELLIE

FAVOURITE BACKERS

GEORGE THE GREEK.

THE RACE COMMENTATOR

THE CARTOON RACE AFFICIONADO

MARKET GEORGE

LUCKY FRED

NENINIT (silent T)

MAD VIC

COLIN

THE PICNIC BOYS

GEORGE

BERN

PUFFING BILLY

JONAH

THE HOGGER

MR HIEROGLYPHICS

'EAVY 'ANDED 'ARRY

MR SQUINTS

MR.5P DOUBLES

THE DANCER

GRAND NATIONAL PUNTER

MR THANKING YOU

MICK THE BUTCHER

Hans (rip)

The Guy who likes to look like he is a shrewdie

Piggy in the middle

CHOCOLATE TASH

THE GRIM REAPER

SNOTTY RON

THE ARMY AND NAVY GIRLS

OXY YEN

ALL ON JIM

superstitious sally

FORM BOOK FRED

Big Stewie.

HAPPY DAYS

Yellow nutkin

AYRTON SENNAPOD

The Toilet man

Betty Etfair

The Kfin Dog Owner

BIG COL

"Odds on" Theo

THE SYNDICATE WATCHER

The CHIP SHOP MAN

Terry

SLIPPERS

SICK MICK *****

NERVOUS DOG FORECAST MAN

MAXXIE

NANNYGOAT PLACE

MAKE ME LUCK BOSS

10p SHORT

MONEY GONE, MONEY GONE

The Accountants

Charlie the Chinaman

SHY

THE FINE GENTLEMAN

THE EX-JOCKEY

THE BANK MANAGER

AUGUSTO

THE PRODIGY

DANGER HORSE

FIGGIS

EYES IN BACK OF HEAD MAN

THE DOGGY MEN

Typically Tropical

One Out Tom.......

The Professional........

Colonel Klink

Finally, from Oz, Ronnie

'IT'LL BUY ME A COFFEE'

The Knitter

RAY

JOAN COLLINS !

'JOES MUMS MATE'

MAKE UP LADY

STINKY NIGE

Time Lord

PIKEY JIM

JUST PICK 7

Union Jack Boy

MR COULDNT TELL YOU

Mr Go home my son, go home

Irish Peter

Jack The Hat

'IS THAT AN A?' Formerly known as ' CHECK IT AGAIN PLEASE MATE.' (R.I.P.)

SKINTY JOHN

A superb thread. One that needs saving.

Irish/Canadian Pat

I have attended the winter racing at the Florida tracks quite a few times, so there is too much to write about, so I`ll stick to the visit I made about eighteen years ago, when I teamed up with an Irishman who had lived in Canada for the previous twenty years. He was a 55 year old single man - very tall and thin as a rake. Unfortunately Pat suffered from diabetes and had to go away from time to time to give himself an insulin injection. He used to go down to Florida every winter to get away from the cold Canadian winters.
When in Canada, he was a bloodstock agent to a couple of very wealthy Canadians of Irish extraction. I asked Pat what was the most he had spent on a yearling. His reply was, $400,000. "Was it any good", I asked. "No" was the reply - he was a man of few words. "Did any of your purchases turn out to be good class horses"?, I enquired. Again, "no" was the reply. Crikey, I thought, I`ve been in the wrong job all these years. He was based at Greenwood - one of the best Canadian racecourses.

Pat was a member of the Total Abstinence Society, and never smoked or drank alchohol. However, he certainly more than made up for missing out on those vices, with another sin - gambling. I`ve never seen a gambling addict like him. He claimed to have no property or possessions, save the few neccessities he had brought with him to Florida. Every day he was dressed in a thick charcoal grey or navy blue cotton suit, clean shirt and tie, and highly polished black shoes. I suppose I used to dress up a bit myself - I`ve always believed in looking smart at the races. As a pair, we must have stood out like a sore thumb among all the other tropically dressed racegoers. The many Americans who I got to know used to call me England.

I travelled over to the United States on a 90 day visa. I went racing on 88 of those days - the only two days I missed was the day I arrived, and the day I departed. My motel - owned by a very friendly German lady - was just a ten minute bus ride from Gulf Stream Park Racetrack - much further of course to Calder and Hialeah. The last named has, I think, closed. To get to Hialeah you had to go down a street unoffically named "Crack Alley", so called because of the drug dealing in that area. Many racegoers were mugged and left badly beaten by the gangs of addicts - quite a few were killed. It was a beautiful racecourse, and in times gone by was the racecourse preferred by the socialites, actors and glamorous actresses.

Pat was always on the bus when I got on; we never said very much until we arrived at the track - I admit I often had a bit of a hangover. The entrance fee for the day was dirt cheap. I had bought a book of tickets for the whole meeting and it worked out at about $1 a day - my 3 month bus ticket was equivalent to 65 cents per day, so in sterling terms, transport costs and entry came to around 1 per day.
There were of course lots of local racegoers, or fans, as they called themselves, and some quite amusing ones too. One who used to make me laugh was a guy who I nicknamed, "Bigshot". He always dressed loud: white clothes, spats over his shoes, huge gold rings and bracelets, gold rimmed glasses and a big cigar. He never talked in dollars; it was never less than millions, and would often progress into billions - ten billion, 20 billion and ever upwards, and as loud as you like; always complaining about the lack of big owners, like those of old - the Whitneys, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers etc. We eventually became irritated by him, but had a good laugh in the end when it was discovered that he was a warehouse labourer.

We would always go for a meal before racing began. Pat would often talk about his times in Ireland; he was friendly with all the big, long established names - the O` Briens, Dreapers, Weld, Magnier, Oxx etc. He had never been back to his home country once since he left, and one day said he would love to return. Quite why he had never been back to visit I don`t know, and I never asked. He introduced me to some of his Canadian friends - mostly trainers and a few jockeys. They included one of the Doyles - father is famous bloodstock dealer, Jack Doyle; top jockeys Sandy Hawley and Dave Penna are names I also remember.

I got to know a few of the track trainers - one or two who`s knowledge, it has to be said, of horses, the training of horses, and the sport in general could be written on the back of a postage stamp. I asked one of them, Bill, how he managed to get owners, despite the fact he never trained winners. He said: "I just bull_hit my way around". Bill introduced me to an ex trainer who had the good fortune to train a Kentucky Derby winner. He was now totally skint - and looked it. Rumour was that he had become a "Stooper". These are the men who stay behind after the racing has finished and walk along the stands and concourse, stooping down all the time to pick up the discarded Pari Mutuel tickets, and then taking them home to sort through later (probably all night, looking at the bagloads some of them took away) hoping to find some winning tickets - quite a regular occurence apparently.

Another fellow I got to know well was Bob. He used to eat and sleep the game - reckoned he was a pro punter, or professional handicapper as they are known in the States. Paddy, myself and Bob would usually stand together at paddockside. Bob was a nice bloke and a character and, in his southern drawl, would chivvy-up every jockey in every race as he passed by on his mount: "Go get em Larry, you`re lookin good Jerry, Mr Jean Cruget - mighty fine, all the best Bobby - bring him on home" etc.
Bob`s pro punting did not stand the test of time, however, as three years later, when I next bumped into him on the racecourse he was selling the Daily Racing Form from a news stand. He also earned extra cash by leading up some of the horses from the barns down behind the backstretch to the paddock for a few dollars.

When the racing began, Paddy would go into overdrive; he would start off by doing the Pick 6, Pick 3, and on each individual race he would do the Trifecta and Perfecta - he would then add these selctions to others in the race and would Box them, Wheel them and God knows what else. He so seldom made a profit on a race, and regularly drew a blank. He used to get so excited during a race, swaying around like a tall tree; he also had the unfortunate habit during a tight finish of violently shanking the change inside his trouser pocket, so that for all the world he gave the appearance of committing an obscene act.
If it was a photo, we would go inside and watch the replay. In the betting hall there was a little Hispanic who used to always be shouting at the top of his voice and giving a vituoso performance - holding up his fingers and playing to the hispanic section. It seemed as if he was acting as bookmaker and taking bets on the outcome. Pat would wind him up when he disagreed. One day, Pancho (I named him after the Cisco Kid`s sidekick) got mad with Pat and spat at him and called him a Ratfink (an American insult name). Pat threw down $50 dollars on the floor as a bet. The hispanic threw his fifty. The result was then announced - Pat was right. However, the hispanic claimed he had nominated the winner. They started to wrestle, but security men arrived and they were both taken away and warned that if they breached the gaming rules again they would be handed over to the police and that full charges would be brought against them both. As it was, they were banned from the course for a day.

Pat could be very argumentative sometimes, but that was just his way. We both were fans of the works of William Shakespeare and were always throwing quote`s from plays at each other during the day. For instance, if he said something like: "Jack looks very smart today", I would reply: "The apparel oft proclaims the man", and if I said, "I can`t believe my horse lost that photo, I`m almost speechless, he would say: "speak man, give sorrow words, the grief that whispers to the o`er fraught heart and bids it break". It was great fun. He was very into high culture and loved opera and religious music. I once asked him what was the greatest moment in his life, and he replied: "being at St Paul`s Cathedral and listening to Beniamano Gigli singing the Panis Angelicus" (a solemn but very tuneful piece of music sung at times during catholic Mass - I think. I`m a protestant).

After the last race had been run, Pat and two Canadian pals would then jump into a car and speed off to either Hollywood or Flagler dog tracks for another fourteen races to wager on - well pat would be anyway. I went with them on the odd occasion, and it wasn`t really for me - not after so many horse races anyway. Pat, however, would be firing with both barrels, as usual. He was always cashing in cheques. I never asked him about his finances, but the losses must have been horrendous.

We saw some good horses that year: Unbridled won the Florida Derby, and went on to win a leg of the Triple Crown - I think, and Sunday Silence beat Easy Goer in the Breeder`s Cup Classic. The 2nd`s rider, Pat Day got a rough ride from the punters, as they adjudged him to have ridden a bad race. For the next two days sections of the crowd booed him as he came out onto the track for each race. When I asked one of the more knowledgeable punters why they insisted in continually jeering Pat Day, he replied, "ah, that`s the two dollar punters doing that".
Unbridled has turned out to be a top class sire, and Sunday Silence a great one - in Japan.
On a sad note that season, two grooms were shot dead in their sleeping accomation. I cannot remember whether it was Gulf Stream or Calder.The latter, I think. What the motive for the killings was I never found out

I called my daily Florida routine the 5 B`s:-
1. Breakfast
2. Beach
3. Betting
4. Bar Rooms
5. Bed

Prior to going out to Florida on that occasion, I`d had some fairly bad times, business and personal, but that three months completely cleared out my head of all the bad stuff, and I arrived back in Blighty to begin the struggle again.
I tried later to contact Pat, but to no avail and never saw him again in later visits. I feared the worst, as he sometimes looked so unwell - obviously the debilitating affects of the diabetes. He made my visit that year so much more lively and enjoyable than it would have been had I not met him. I often think about Pat. He loved horses, and the racing - sometimes. He once said he hated the game for what it had done to him financially and personally, but would then say, "A bad day at the races is better than a good day at the football match". He was a great character.

Henry, that was one of those posts that looks excessively long when you first view it, but then you decide to read through it properly, and feel humbled that you ever doubted the experience would be worthwhile.

Wonderful post. Thank you.

"Betting shop managers would probably make good psychyoanalysts"
You may well have a good point there, Henry.

Saving

where is aitl ?

Definitely.Bring him back!

.QUALITY NOT ONE BAD READ.

A fantastic thread, a credit to all who have contributed. Well done.

Worrying how many lunatics were called John, cannyman :^O

Henrys stories are longish, but well worth reading.