FROM THE ARCHIVES:Getting to the post-Christmas races at Leopardstown in 1944 was no easy task, as all private motoring had been stopped by petrol rationing. In this Irishman's Diary, Quidnunc (probably Patrick Campbell) described what was required to get there. -
JOE JOYCE
SHOULD IT be your desire to become a social outcast – cast as far out socially as if you wore a grey bowler hat with brown hound’s-tooth plusfours – try seeking a lift to Leopardstown races on Boxing Day.
Up to midday I had no intention of going near the races. Then, by our list of human engagements for the day, it appeared that Leopardstown was the only place at which more than two or three conscious people might be expected to gather.
I went to the Shelbourne Hotel. There were lines of funeral coaches outside. Inside were a number of trainers, owners, trainers’ friends, owners’ friends, and nobody’s friends standing about in camel-hair overcoats, swinging race-glasses bright with the badges of many meetings – if I had a pair I might fall prey to this conceit myself – chatting, and owning the piece of carpet upon which they stood at the moment.
I saw a trainer to whom I have now and then dragged a forelock by the roots, in search of the information that trainers are commonly supposed to give to people who are civil to them. The truth of the matter is that trainers give information to people who have saved their lives, and been badly crippled in the process.
I said: “Hullo, there.” This is an important thing to know about people who go racing. “Hullo, there,” is the greeting. “Hullo” is what we two shillings on the Tote for a place players say to each other, a kind of niggardly, common word. I said: “Hullo, there, you got your cab fixed all right?” The trainer waved his hand happily. “All the compliments of,” he cried, “yes, thanks, we’re all right. You carry on.”
Some way from the expected result. But when you go racing in a funeral coach it’s the funeral coach you reserved after that clever little win at the Curragh in ’39. There is no such thing as a casual cab among the camel-hair, race-glass characters.
The difference between the man who has no cab and the man who has a cab on race day is as wide as the difference between the man who stumbles out of the mail train carrying three brown paper parcels, his wife’s blouse box, and a hockey stick belonging to his little girl, and the man who walks out of a first-class carriage followed by a porter bearing pig-skin luggage.
There was an altercation between the hall-porter and a jarvey. The jarvey had been let down. I said: “Please, if it wouldn’t disturb your horse, could you take me out?”
The jarvey blossomed like a flower. He said: “Certainly, sir, only two quid there and back.” After some painfully mean argument, we divided this sum by two. We climbed upon his outside car. The jarvey wrapped the rug laid along the the middle of the car round his legs. He gave me the rug off the horse.
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