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Making Allowances
Chapter 2, Part 1
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Not many months passed before Dad started talking about a return to
the saddle. It became his inspiration drive and probably helped to accelerate
his recovery. Yet we could not comprehend what on earth possessed him to pursue
the very thing that had almost killed him. Perhaps, looking back, this was a little naïve. We like to think
of ourselves as a family blessed with a little more than a modicum of
intelligence, but we failed to appreciate the significance of history in shaping
the future. One of my schoolteachers once said that, in order for us to
evaluate what was happening, or likely to happen in the future, it was important
for us to see things in the context of past events. Perhaps the old man’s
resolve was not so surprising when this strange decision was viewed in the
context of his past. Dad was born the fifth of seven boys, one of a number of large
families that grew up together on a council estate. The country had been ravaged
by the War; times were still hard, shortages and scarcity tested one’s spirit
time and time again. Needless to say, there were no luxuries and the children
were left to create their own diversions. At least, in this respect, He and his peers were lucky to be at
large in the vast open spaces of rural West Country England. This was a perfect
ground for a fertile imagination, as gangs of small boys re-enacted the
adventures of Robin Hood, Wyatt Earp and other heroes. In the long periods of shortages followed, it remained a struggle
for Dad’s mother to feed and clothe seven boys. In this way, any treats such
as a rare cinema trip or a quarter of sweets were hard earned through hours of
labouring, fruit picking, errand running, and so on. Still then, the need to entertain themselves was very important. He
recalled how the family would huddle around the radio set to catch the big
football match, the cricket tests, the title fight and the classic horse races.
In winter, Saturday mornings would herald huge, twenty-a-side
“international” football matches between pick-up teams of boys on the
common. The summer holidays would see “test matches” between teams of
similar sides, lasting over several days, with play extending into the dusk
hours, or until the gnats bit the players into retreat. Sport, then, was the main interest. Pleasures were few and, indeed,
for the fifth of seven sons of a factory worker, so were the opportunities to
escape. I said earlier that my father, intellectually, was no mug. In fact,
he was a bit of a writer himself. At the age of nine, he won a National
Children’s Writing Competition sponsored by Cadbury’s Chocolate, for an
essay about why he loved eating Cadbury’s Chocolate. Even at nine years of
age, he was something of a wordsmith, his adjectives conjuring up luxuriant
images of pleasure, of fantastic voyages to
faraway places His mother read his essay aloud to the family one evening and
declared that it was good enough to win first prize, which, indeed, it did. He
won a splendid assortment of confectionery, specially delivered by parcel post
and remembers the celebrity status more fondly than the lorry load of chocolate! There may be a “curse of genius”, or it may just be simply that
success depends purely on being in the right place at the right time. Dad passed
his eleven plus exam, but strangely, this did not work in his favour. The
nearest Grammar School was a train journey away, some twenty miles across the
river. Grammar School life did not begin well. A younger son of a poor
family, mixing among the more well-heeled members of society was difficult
enough. Being one of the shortest boys in his year made matters even worse. In
his patched-up uniform and scuffed shoes, he was an easy target for taunts. One thing he could do, however, was fight, and do it well.
Inevitably, there was trouble in store. When a parent confronted the school
about her son coming home with a black eye, Dad had no defence; his mother was
too busy, too far away and too tired to attend the meeting. He was suspended. The ordeal continued. Several boys from Dad’s hometown, on the
receiving end of similar treatment, decided after several years, that avoidance
was the best option. The quintet would board the train at the local and then
alight at the next before the Rail Bridge, spending the long days in a
Huckleberry Finn type existence around the Dockyards and Wharfs , returning over
diverse field tracks before tea-time. Justice, for want of a better word, was eventually exacted and he
was expelled. Again, there was no appeal from Dad’s parents, they simply
didn’t have the time or the energy. Their lives were hard enough, thank you. So, my father had virtually run out of options. His schooling over,
his attention turned to his burning boyhood dream, to be a jockey. He wrote a letter, took a trip on his eldest brother’s motorbike
and two weeks later was heading to Andoversford, near Cheltenham on a bus. He
had left his family and friends behind, to take up a job as an apprentice for a
local National Hunt trainer He carried his meagre belongings and a round of
sandwiches in a small grey suitcase. He was fifteen years old. Two hard winters followed, and Dad became used to the sting of the
winter frost in sockless booted feet on Cleeve Hill at dawn, the musky warmth of
the tack-room, where the apprentices and lads, like the bedraggled children of a
Dickensian tale, scampered and scraped together a living from their frugal
allowances and other scraps. Here, he learned his trade, watched and waited,
hoping that his time would one day come when he would don the silks and fly past
the stands to the cheers of the crowd. But this was racing at the arse-hanging-out-of-the-trousers-end. The gaffer, as Dad would recall, was an-ex champion jockey, who had
been forced to retire early as a result of ill-health. With a modest stable and
a few very loyal owners, the gaffer struggled to make a go of things, and fared
fairly well; but the racing game can deal cruel blows and is no respecter of
reputation. It did not necessarily follow that success as a jockey would
guarantee success as a trainer. So it was to ultimately prove for the gaffer. My father recalled a particular horse who was the flagship of the
stable, and won some quality handicap chases, who went lame on the eve of a
showcase race at Chepstow. He recalled another turning point when a promising
young chaser was on a winning streak, blowing away all opposition. The gaffer
had entered him for the Gold Cup and the campaign was gathering momentum. But
this proved to be short-lived. They decided to give the horse a run at Windsor in late February,
to finish his preparation. Three fences from home, with the race in the bag, the
horse baulked and crashed to the floor, throwing the unfortunate pilot well
clear. Dad, who had been “leading up” on that day, ran to the fence where
the horse lay struggling in acute distress on the floor. The gaffer, who had ridden up with the vet, went over to the horse,
knelt down, then, after a few seconds, stood back up and walked over to my
father, who was frozen with shock at witnessing this poor animal’s grief. Dad
watched as the gaffer, faced fixed in a stern scowl walked briskly past him. He
was a tough old boot. Dad continued to gaze on at the scene, as if in a trance,
as the vet drew the green tarpaulin around the stricken horse. He began to feel
a dull aching in his stomach and throat, when he felt a father’s arm around
his shoulder and a gentle voice. “Come on son”. It was the gaffer. They had walked barely ten yards when the muted crash of a single
pistol shot rang through the damp wintry air. In two years, dad had never
witnessed a flicker of emotion from the gaffer. Now, this island of a man stood
sloped over the rails, shaking his head and rubbing his weathered face. Only
later would Dad realise the significance of these simple expressions. For the
gaffer, the death of this horse effectively signalled the end of his business.
His hopes and fears for the future were pinned to this tragic young chaser. A
Gold Cup win would have helped his profile, brought valuable business to the
yard. Instead, the numbers dwindled and, with it, the gaffer’s good
reputation. Racing could be very unfair.
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If you would like to contact Richie, please email him at: richie@baylands.fsnet.co.uk
© Copyright Richie Phillips. No unauthorised reproduction allowed. |
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