Grand National

I love it when, quite out of the blue, the Minx comes up with a family activity. Today it was the (virtual) Grand National. She jumped on the family WhatsApp group and told us all to pick a horse, which reminded me of being at my grandad's when I was young. 

He was a keen better on the horses and on a Saturday afternoon his small living room would be packed. There would be a fug of cigarette smoke around head height and in the corner was the small black and white TV. Periodically, a band of white static would make its way sedately down the screen, disrupting the already poor quality picture. 

My grandad and one, some or all of my uncles and my dad would be in there along with a cousin or two while my nan would be dispatched across the road to the betting shop (my grandad only left the house to have his hair cut). I would look at the racing pages and pick horses solely on the basis of their names. Occasionally, I'd get a couple of winners, earning me suspicious looks: gamblers are a superstitious bunch.

Today, I chose 'Any Second Now' (a song by Depeche Mode), while other appropriate choices were made for Hannah ('Jury Duty') and Milly ('The Storyteller. All names picked, the ever generous Minx placed the bets on our behalf. 

By the time the race actually started, Dan and I were out on our daily walk and so we posted this photo to the group which was otherwise consumed with tracking the horses' progress. (If I'm honest, I think we were all more comfortable with virtual horses than the casualties of a real Grand National.)

Anyway, none of us won but I came third :-)

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-11.1 kgs
Reading: 'Kraftwerk: Future Music From Germany' by Uwe Schütte