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Making Allowances
Chapter 3, Part 1
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Perhaps guilt is too strong a word. Nevertheless, it was something
very similar which caused me to do the things I later did. There was no escaping the fact that Dad’s dreams of
becoming a professional National Hunt jockey, effectively ended with the news of
my impending arrival and, whilst I did not ask to be born, this was the first of
many sacrifices he would make for me. It was these sacrifices I would later
remember when the time came for me to make the big decisions. Mum would recall how, from the very beginning, Dad
would fritter his money away on all sorts of things. Most famously, she
remembers how, not long after my second birthday, I had been staying at his
mother’s house for the day. Dad collected me after work and on seeing how I
cried at having to give up the pedal car I had borrowed from the little boy next
door, collected his pay packet the following day and promptly bought one for me.
He had conveniently forgotten that several bills were due. Almost inevitably, most of my recreation, once I
reached beyond four years was sport-orientated. By now, I had a sister, and Dad
had been fortunate, through his many contacts, to secure a job in a shipping
office. This must have been more like it for him; civilised hours, weekends off,
and better pay. The humble cottage Mum and Dad had bought with every last
ha’penny they possessed, was now extended and transformed into a comfortable
modern family home, with the luxury of a real bathroom and toilet indoors! There
were old farm outbuildings too, which Dad would eventually convert into a pair
of stable boxes, with a hay store and a tack room; his own yard!! Best of all was the garden, over a hundred feet of
lawn, lovingly and painstakingly created by dad and his father, which, for the
next twenty odd years, served as a venue for all sorts of sporting pursuits.
There were conventional uses, like football, with the help of a half size goal
which we built from timber cuts, attaching a real net. Then there was cricket,
in a proper purpose-built practice net. And then there were the unconventional flights of
fancy, like my Spacehopper Grand National Course, which consisted of two crudely
constructed mounds of grass cuttings, the
nearest material to spruce that I could find. All sorts of sporting scenarios
were re-enacted on that lawn, from tennis, badminton and high jump, to Evel
Kneivel pushbike stunts and an inspired drunken Blind Kiss Chase on the night of
my 18th birthday party. If only lawns could talk. But of all these things, it was dad with whom I had
most fun. After all, he was my best mate. The best times were between the ages
of 6 and 8 years, when he was still in his footballing prime, amazing me with
bicycle kicks, diving headers and spectacular flying saves. Also, I was still as
small as to be able to unload speculative shots and lobs without the fear of the
ball sailing into the neighbour’s prized flower garden. We had some great
matches; each would have ten shots which resembled chances in a real match. I
could not shoot within 5 yards of the goal (Dad 15 yards) except for headers and
rebounds. Dad would do his Kenneth Wolstenhulme bit, whilst I concentrated on
trying to beat him. Dad always managed to make the games reach interesting
climaxes and I never got the feeling that he ever let me win, though of course,
on most occasions, he did. Later, as a youth and then a young man, cricket was the
passion. I was a fair bowler and as a batsman, I could play straight and
correctly enough to afford Dad a chance to develop his inswingers. As a
reasonable opening bat, he would often goad me into periods of extreme hostility
by pretending to commentate on the fluency of his strokeplay and accumulate an
“innings” of “tremendous flair and style”. Each time, I fell for it, and
Dad would not be content until he had received one that crashed into the stumps
or rose to throat height. He seemed to thrive on danger. Which brings us back to the Racing Game. Dad, as long
as I could remember, held his jockey’s licence and during my early years he
would have been point-to-pointing most weekends between February and May, or at
football when there were no meetings. I would not have missed him, because I
would go to my mother’s parents for the weekend, the land of doing what I
liked, sweets and colour television. Both of my grandfathers were keen followers of
horseracing, even before they became associated through Mum and Dad’s
marriage. Even before I ever set foot on a racecourse I was hooked. Many an
afternoon would be spent watching the racing. If we were lucky, the BBC would be
showing three early races and there was the famous ITV Seven, on the other side.
If you were lucky, then, you would have ten races to watch, although usually,
the scheduling meant you only managed to see seven of them. My two grandfathers taught me how to pick out horses,
read form and understand odds. If there had been an “O” Level in Turf
Accountancy, I would have passed it by the age of seven! I would also get the
benefit of a fantasy world, in which both Granddads would put bets on my
selection, with their money, and if
the horse won, would get the dividend. Fantastic! This was the more acceptable
face of the Racing Game! I was about seven when Dad took me to Worcester
racecourse; a smart, if vulnerable circuit, always looking as if it were in
danger of flooding. He took me down to look at the fences. I was amazed at how
tall and stiff they were in real life and marvelled at how easily the horses
leapt over them on TV. We walked along the bed of an open ditch to show me how
wide the fences could be, I marvelled even more. We stayed down by the fence for
one of the races, how could I ever forget? “Stand close to me,” said Dad hugging a protective arm around my shoulders, ”here they come!” I couldn’t see them, but I began to hear a faint rumble, which rose to the drumming sound, like a million hearts beating fast, a rasping snort or two, a slap of leather on muscle, a click-click-click sound and then……….
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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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