Distracted Dad
Richard Hearn thinks the horses of this world are safer without him betting on them
I’ve been having sleepless nights about the fact that I’m a murderer. Now don’t worry. It’s possible I’m getting a few hours at the beginning and probably a fair bit as dawn arrives, so it’s not as bad as it sounds. It always feels like it’s ‘sleepless’, doesn’t it? Oh it’s the murdering bit that bothers you? Oh, I see.
If it’s only horse-murdering I go in for, is that any better? So what if I didn’t do it directly, I may as well have done. The horse I bet on at the Grand National didn’t survive. Problem is there’s a pattern emerging – they always die. I’m not doing it again, the guilt’s too much.
My weapon of choice was a stubby red pen with Ladbrokes on the side, but cause-and-effect seem so intertwined, I’m waiting for a knock at the door.
“I could have bought an Americano and not had blood on my hands”
This year’s poor unfortunate was Hear the Echo. I didn’t even watch the race – just put one pound each way on it, on a whim, in my lunch break. I could have bought an Americano and not had blood on my hands. Instead, I was a Grim Reaper staring at odds on the betting shop wall.
I also preferred it when you got your own handwritten slip back, barely legible but full of optimism. Now it’s converted into humourless, tiny text, like the small print – fittingly perhaps – on a coroner’s report.
It’s not like this with football betting. I’ve put money before on Tottenham, and though it never ends happily, I still know to look for the results on the sports pages rather than the obituary.
Perhaps I should recognise the signs; I am a bad luck charm. Some friends don’t even watch their team, or listen on the radio, feeling that they’ll jinx the result. The natural extension to this is don’t try and find out the results the next day. Or ever. Left in limbo where three points/horse being alive* (delete where applicable) is still one of the possibilities. A Schrödinger’s Cat approach to sport.
Maybe that’s the answer. Place a bet, sure, just never seek out the result – in a parallel sporting life, Tottenham will be top of the Premiership and my Grand National choices will still be galloping in a sunlit field.
