Free bus from town centre up to the Derby Arms where we wait for 5 or 10 minutes before deciding that we might just as well proceed into the grandstand and go for bacon rolls (long, but not exactly a baguette of the 'Upper Crust' variety) instead of a beverage.
From bacon rolls we pass to the parade ring where we are able to pass our expert eyes over the runners for the first race. I remember something about a sweating horse being bad at this stage; a fit horse should not yet have worked up a sweat. Then I remember something else about how an unscrupulous yard might chuck a bucket of water over their horse to mislead the punters - this being a day or so after the famed Godolphin yard was caught feeding illegal substances to its horses. So we are not much further ahead.
BH puts some money on the Fallon horse in the first race, but some other horse leads all the way, to be pipped at the post by another. Couldn't have been more than a couple of inches or so in it, all very exciting. But no good to us with Fallon fourth. Interesting that the horse that nearly won had led from the front, more or less the whole way - an approach to a race which I was once told was favoured in the US but not here, where we think it much more sporting to let some other poor sod do all the work and make the pace and then steam past him in the home straight. Talking of him, not very sure whether the horses were him or her, but there were some lady jockeys and somebody told us that lady jockeys were much better these days than they used to be; perhaps the ladies are the only ones still prepared to put up with the grotty conditions accorded to apprentice jockeys.
Onto the favourite for the second race, which led all the way and won by half a length or something - although at the time I thought we had lost. BH rested on her laurels at this point, being somewhat ahead, and we were just spectator sportspeople for the remainder of our visit. Which included another exciting win by a nose - in which circumstances all the theatricals of the jockeys bounding about in the saddle might well make a difference. Thought about chucking a few quid at rank outsiders at 66 to 1 - in memory of the time when we backed 'Jet Ski Lady' - and didn't, which was just as well as it was not a good day for outsiders. The chaps setting the odds had known their business.
Out to the yard to find the van illustrated, probably not covering his costs on this day. But he did still sell tobacco, as it says on the tin, including some quite respectable looking cigars, although I am not sure that I would risk buying a respectable cigar from such a person. A person who told us that he has to cover up from 2015. But maybe the business will be finished by then: during the day we saw one person smoking a proper cigar and probably less than ten others smoking cigarettes, and this on an occasion which would have been full of puffers when we first started racing at Epsom more then twenty years ago.
Passed on the smokes, but I did queue up for a couple of mini bottles of white wine which were quite satisfactory. As was the standard of fancy dress: quite enough fancy ladies in full war paint to keep us entertained between races.
See http://www.epsomdowns.co.uk/ for the next occasion.
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