Gamblers (not so) Anonymous

Or, Tea Time Club Rides Again

Conversation in the pub, particularly amongst regulars, can often be a little bit repetitive. Especially between those regulars who will see each other at least once a day.

Take, for instance, Tea Time Club. Nothwithstanding when one or more of them ventures off on holiday, they tend to spend most evenings together. So after the usual greetings and five minutes of discussing the best and worst of their day, working or otherwise, conversation could stagnate. Usually, that is where sport comes in. There’s normally a bit of football to be discussed and analysed, maybe some global sporting competition like the current Rugby World Cup, or a bit of international cricket to be covered.

At one point, they even spent a good half an hour watching and analysing the Irish Hurling final.

But the most frequent topic of conversation is usually who has done what on the horses that day.

This should be no surprise. Gambling and drinking make good bedfellows. The pub has two fruit machines, where punters like Carl can deposit their hard-earned to watch four illuminated wheels whizz round and never quite land on four lemons. The pool team usually end their night with a couple of quid on a game of ‘killer’. And sometimes, people like Gary come up trumps with a chance outside flutter and wind up with a new golf buggy…

But nothing is more frequent than a flutter on the horses. And whilst this isn’t solely the preserve of Tea Time Club, everybody I’m going to introduce you to today do belong in that select band of committed bar-side drinkers.

Mr McCririck

The first thing you’ll notice about Mr McCririck is that he is a big Huddersfield Village fan. Claims they’re the biggest club in the world, with the best stadium, best players and by far the greatest fans. In fact his love of the terriers is such that he actively despises Leeds United and anything even remotely associated with them. And I mean anything.

We use branded pint glasses for beer, since they’re frequently provided free of charge by many breweries, which helps keep our costs down and thus the price of our beer. So normally the brewery logo on your glass bears little resemblance to the beer within it.

One of the breweries whose glasses we used to have a good number of was Leeds Brewery. And on more than one occasion Mr McCririck was served a drink in one of these glasses. The first time I did it was purely by chance, and I had no idea it would be a problem for him.

But, as Pongo will attest to, I quite like a little bit of a joke here and there. So whenever I had the chance, I would surreptitiously seek a Leeds Brewery glass to give to Mr McCririck. And on more than one occasion, he threatened to dispense the contents of the glass straight over my head. What a waste of beer that would be, just because the glass said ‘Leeds’ on it…

Luckily for both my hair-care routine and Mr McCririck’s pocket, all the Leeds glasses have now disappeared. Not that his pocket doesn’t take a frequent hit anyway, enamoured as he is with a flutter on the gee-gees.

It is often said that the youth of today spend far too much time on their mobiles, and the elders think it incredibly odd and rude. If that’s the case, Mr McCririck is the oldest youth I’ve yet to come across. Of course, he isn’t engrossed in social media or anything like that; he’s normally on odds checker, studying form on the Racing Post, or accessing one of his many betting accounts.

Sometimes whole conversations can be going on at all sides around him, and he would be none the wiser, so studious is he with his considerations of which horse to back. He considers it all. The going. The form. The jockey. The trainer. The course. The stars. The crystal ball. And, if he could, I think he’d study the tea leaves too, to see what they said.

Whatever he does, it seems to work well enough, though.

He claims he doesn’t back ‘favourites’, he backs ‘winners’. And judging by the amount of boasting, I reckon he’s one of a tiny handful of people to make a profit from gambling. In fact he’s got the bug so badly, and claims to win so frequently, that he’s started selling tips to some of the other regulars…

Seymour

Seymour works in education so is clearly, to some degree at least, academically minded. Not that he applies this aptitude to his choice of football team, as he too follows Huddersfield Village. He did once, however, apply his academic gifts to the world of horse racing.

He’d spent plenty of time with our tipster-in-residence, Mr McCririck, and decided that he wanted a piece of the action. From studiously considering Mr McCririck’s selections over the course of what appeared to be several months, I assume he had worked out a fail-safe formula to come up with a certainty.

He made his pick, and then, not to seem too keen, sidled his way into the conversation as Brunel and Mr McCririck began discussing various bets they had on and exchanged tips. ‘Oh, I’ve got one, it’s gonna be a certainty’, he duly announced. Brunel took the bait, and, in his usual forthright way, began to broadcast to all and sundry that we had a new tipster in town.

So the tip travelled through Tea Time Club, around the pub and made its way to yours truly behind the bar.

So confident was Seymour in his selection, he even offered to repay Brunel his stake on the tip in the impossible chance that it would not come in.

Naturally, I had a quick glance at the field and decided to also take heed of his tip. Mr Escobar, running in the 18:10 at Galway on 2^nd August (which just so happened to be the day in question). Odds of 7/2. Paying 6 places instead of 4.

A combination of Seymour’s enthusiasm and the odds and places paying meant I thought it was worth a quid each way.

Reader, I’m fairly sure Mr Escobar is still running the 18:10 at Galway. And in the unlikely event it ever reaches the finish line, I reckon it’ll be ridden straight on to the Pritt Stick factory…

Hari(bo)

Hari also likes the occasional flutter, but doesn’t appear, to me at least, to take the horses quite so seriously as others. Gambling with his well-being, though, is a different thing entirely…

He spent most of his working life driving, either public transport or road haulage. Now, as he approaches the end of his working life, he’s decided to invest in another form of transport – a motorcycle. It’s probably the dictionary definition of a mid-life crisis.

He’s spent 30 years on the road, surrounded on all sides by three or four tons of metal, in vehicles which, were he to be involved in an accident, chances are the other party would come off much worse. So naturally, he’s decided that he now wants to ride about on straddling an engine, where, were he to have a bit of a spill, he and his vehicle would part company and the only thing protecting him would be a thin layer of cow skin…

Hari has also had some trouble with his throat recently, which started as a little bit of a niggle and developed into quite the serious lump. Now I’m not sure if the original cause of his poorly throat was because he’s a committed smoker or because he doesn’t tend to stop talking for more than a second at a time.

Nevertheless, he had to go in for some tests on it. One of which involved a biopsy. And which Pongo and the rest of the Tea Time Club suggested would result in him sounding like the policemen from the Haribo advert.

Fortunately all was fine and, I’m pleased to report, he didn’t end up talking an octave or two higher. None of which stops people frequently remarking ‘we ARE the police’ in his presence…

He also recently acquired some tins of paint so he could refresh his house. He claims they were Dulux but he paid £20 for 5 tins. So, unless they were sample pots, I can only assume they were Bulux or Dulucks. Whatever the brand was, I’m fairly sure Del Boy wouldn’t think twice before knocking them out down Peckham market. Clearly, not satisfied with just gambling with his health on the back of his motorbike, Hari will also take a gamble on his interior decorating…

He also claimed they were called ‘jade white’, and, since he was going for a neutral colour scheme, they sounded like just the job. But, having thrown them onto the walls (well, painted them onto the walls; he’s not THAT loopy), he claims they’ve ‘never seen white’.

Perhaps there’s a reason for that. As most of us know, Jade is famously green…

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