A DAY AT THE RACES

Saturday was a special treat as Tess’s ballet class had an open day.  The girls attend ballet every Saturday during the year, but the parents are not allowed to watch them dance, the first they see them is at the yearly concert in November and then the open class at the end of the year.  So I was lucky enough to get an invite and with 20 other sets of parents we watched the little ones skip, chopstick run, fairy feet and side skip their way through their 45 minute class.  It was so adorable and we were allowed to take photos which were an added bonus.  After the class, I had an old work acquaintance come over to me to say hello!  It was amazing to see Carmel, we had traveled to Bali together quite a few years ago and some-one I saw at work several times during the year when I was in the travel industry.  Her daughter was in Tessie class!  It really is a small world that is for sure.  I was quite sweet that she mentioned that she reads my blogs and to keep strong.  It is always nice to hear those things and makes it all worthwhile.

Saturday was also Christmas Race Day for 6 of the posse.  It was the only chance I would get to go to the races while I was home, having only 5 Saturdays here-each one very precious and the races important enough to take one up.  After a bottle of champagne before we left we arrived at the track at 12 noon.  As usual Brother Brad had come up with some tickets for us, saving us 20AUD each on the entry’, and once in we made a beeline for one of the few members venues that has air conditioning.  It was a steamer today of 32C.  As all race days, we opted for some form of head attire, and we ran with Christmas headbands, and I think based on the weather this was a very wise choice.  They looked great.  Once we were inside the members, all the chairs and tables were taken, so we found a section of the bar where we could leave our champagne and our kitty glass that starts with 10AUD each from all of us and then just chatted, betted and drank the afternoon away in the cool of the member’s area.  Around 2pm we were lucky enough to grab a table and chairs and the afternoon wiled away and I am sad to report we didn’t have a SINGLE win all day.  Not one.  I am not sure if that has EVER happened in the history of Girl Race days.  It’s not as bad as it sounds when we only put in 10 buck each; the champagne is more of the rip out of the whole day with bottles of Yellow costing us $35 that you can buy at the shop for $8…..  That is more of the loss…..  but… in saying that… there was a ‘happy’ guy that asked us if we wanted a bottle of champagne care of his boss’s bar tab and 5 minutes later he was back with a bottle in his hand-and it wasn’t a win on line-we said thanks and he disappeared and we never saw him again!  How nice was that.  So we may not have won a race or any money-we may have paid $35 per bottle of Yellow, but we did see an act of kindness today and that was pretty special.

The last race was at 4.45pm and after checking in with one of Sandy’s friends, who was in a corporate tent, we started to make our way down to the Hamilton Hotel that was a 15 minute walk down the road.  Well we had only gone a few minutes and Sandy broke her shoe…..  It was not repairable and after calling the boys for one of them to bring a spare pair of shoes, she walked bare foot to the Hammo, where we got her into the restaurant until Jase arrived with backup shoes for Sandy and while they were at it we asked them to bring a comfy pair of shoes for Shelly.  We were now armed for a more pleasurable evening with comfortable footwear.  After a magic dinner and feeling okay after sharing 3 bottles of champagne between 3 of us and now onto the vodka and cokes we were all travelling well, maybe a little too well.  I have MASSIVE race days where we wouldn’t even eat, stumble through the early hours of the evening and then finish in the wee hours lucky to remember the whole evening.  Well not tonight.  It seems it was going to be one of those nights out when you can drink like a fish and it wasn’t really going to have much impact and you know when that is happening when we walked back through the front bar to find a table and you notice all the drunk people as we passed.  Oh yes, drunk people don’t really notice drunk people.  I think this was going to be a long night. 

We found a table and settled in for the evening.  There was a professional photographer floating around and with us all being camera shy “NOT” we got some snap taken that will be on the Hammo website on Monday.  I LOVE getting these photos taken as they always look really good and just to make sure I asked them to take another one and to show us for approval.  Fussy much?  There were a lot of people from the races but there were also a lot of people attending Christmas parties and there was one guy that worked with one of SA friends.  By the time we were ready to leave she had sold him one of Christmas headbands for 20 bucks!  Well done Sandy!  She has always been renowned for selling our hats at the end of a race day and making some money.  We decided to hit the road at 9.30pm and head into ‘our’ local, The Caxton.  So we said goodbye to Paula and Tash and walked outside to a waiting cab.  When we got in SA asked the cab driver if he would take us into town for 20 bucks and he said sure.  We asked if he could run the meter anyway to see how much the ride would have been, but then I guess he would have to declare the ride, I’m not sure how all that works, so he stopped and asked what we wanted to do, so we ran with the 20 buck option and when we got onto Caxton Street we asked him much would the ride have cost if it was on the meter and he said around $24.  So not only did we save$4 but we used the headband money and got a free ride to town.  This night was shaping up to be okay, and we still weren’t really that pissed.  I would say we were now tipsy but still in full faculty. 

The Caxton has been our place of drinking choice for the last 4 or so years.  We know one of the bouncers, we used to know the DJ really well until he left and they have been changing them a lot since then, but we have them trained to an extent on our ‘play list’ and they generally will play all our requests and the rest of the music we like.  The age group is mixed, so you don’t feel like you are getting overrun by teeny boppers and depressed with old farts-it’s nice to know that we still fit in the middle of the demographic (well for now).  It really is a great place and we enjoy it.  Tonight was no different, there were enough people around but it wasn’t super packed yet and as soon as we walked in and headed to the bar, there is a bartender that knows SA and Shelly, so he served us and we got 3 drinks for FREE.  Now that is what I am talking about.  How nice!  So we found a seat, loaded our requests with yet another new DJ and then jived and chatted the night away.  We got another FREE drink from our mate and then we ordered a nightcap cocktail, a chocolate bunny, and he only charged us 10 bucks for each one and then it was time for us to head home.  I was stuffed.  By this time it was after midnight and we had to join the taxi queue that had about 15 people in front of us.  There was a taxi steward on duty and was flagging taxi’s and he also took note of a taxi that picked people up from the other side of the road, not in a rank, so that was good to know that they had a fair system going and you don’t mind waiting in those circumstances.  The queue moved quite quickly and we found ourselves in a taxi within 20 minutes and on our way home.  Well you know we weren’t that drunk when I didn’t even want to stop at Harry’s-greasy food sold to drunk people-or Windmill’s-a pizza place that serves the best Aussie pizza’s, not only drunk but I have had them sober and we headed directly home. 

So we may have not won a penny at the races but a great day was had.  Every race day we have pretty much is a mirror image of today, except the FREE drinks at The Caxton but we LOVE our race days and I will miss them when I leave.  Ethiopia don’t have a race track, so no racing horses that you can bet on and have a champers, but I guess that may not be surprising when they don’t have enough money to eat let alone have a punt.  I was also impressed that we were happily drunk, not smashed or paralytic and I think we were all going to pull up okay in the morning.

My last race day and what a great day it was.