Cup Day began with two crows noisily beating the crap out of a koala outside my window.<\/p>\n
They chased him as he leapt from one branch to another and one of them landed on his head and pecked him as he groaned sadly.<\/p>\n
I’ve read enough Shakespeare to recognise a koala\/crow battle as a bona fide augury. I went for the form guide in a rush. Clearly the signs were telling me to back something or other. But, try as I might, I was damned if I could match a runner’s name to the aforementioned scenario.<\/p>\n
“Finche” was as close as I could get. It only needed an S to be two birds or more. But would The Fates send two crows to bash up a koala to tell me to back Finche? Finche was nicely weighted at good odds so, yes, The Fates would. Down to meet the bookie.<\/p>\n
Cup Day at the Lorne Angling and Aquatic Club runs along traditional lines.<\/p>\n
A marquee had been set up in the beer garden to keep the rain off. Free champers on arrival. Salads supplied by devotees of Mrs Beeton and the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union. Carrots had been julienned, but no one had been radicalised towards pomegranates. Excellent.<\/p>\n
The women had taken trouble to look good. And did. But I detected a schism in male fashion at the Anglers this year.
\nA political rift, it seemed. One group of anglers was favouring the in-your-face stylings of Al Grassby and thus resembled
\nEcuadorian rodeo clowns, while the other group had clearly dressed to memorialise the late South Australian premier Don
\nDunstan. I speculate many of their outfits were snatched from the Lorne Op Shop on the Monday before the Cup and dumped back there on the Wednesday after. A whiff of camphor rose off the men with every passing shower.<\/p>\n
Rumpole won the men’s fashion on the field. He looked splendid in his three-piece suit but had to be warned off the sausages mid-afternoon for occ-health and safety reasons. The buttons on his waistcoat were threatening to take out someone’s eye. My eldest daughter came third in the ladies\u2019 section behind the two wives of the two judges. I don’t condemn such corruption.<\/p>\n
It can be a long summer if the missus’ Cup frock goes uncelebrated.<\/p>\n
The commodore took up the mic and announced he had won the footy tipping comp this year and was putting the $400 prize money on the bar. A couple of malcontents who had run for high office at the club and been rejected muttered that it
\nseemed fishy that a commodore of a fishing club could win his own footy tipping comp. Mighty fishy, they said, as they queued for his beer.<\/p>\n
Our bookie was battling technical difficulties, betting agencies were offline, the internet was sporadic. Here was a man alone, taking on a slew of frenzied punters. Have you ever noticed how people who don’t know which end of a horse to shove hay into, are suddenly Bart Cummings on Cup Day? And when they’re in a queue to put a bet on and the field is about to jump and the bookie is slowed by circumstances beyond his control their nag is a dead cert and they become panicky and hostile andsay things they later regret?<\/p>\n
I missed getting on Finche, my omen bet, my certainty. And regretted everything I said about the bookie almost immediately. Because the horse finished fourth.<\/p>\n
As the Cup was run, I noticed a group of Chinese tourists wandering past, staring at us in honest incomprehension. What
\ntype of backwoods corroboree had they stumbled upon? Wild speculations passed through their number. What the hell was
\nthis? A crush of Aussie nuts in fancy dress drinking champagne and screaming at a flatscreen through sausage smoke until a crescendo of hugs and high-fives and people hysterical with joy and others stomping their tickets into the mud and damning their luck.<\/p>\n
I told them it was a religious gathering. And I think I was right. They’ll be wondering about our fevered ceremony for a long time. Remember that day in Oz? Those crazy Anglers? What the…?<\/p>\n
It was a lovely day. And in the evening, with the last race run and the crowd thinning, the marquee was lifted by an
\nonshore easterly and dumped approximately 44 gallons of cold water on my wife, making her sole entrant of the Surf Coast Shocked and Angry Ladies Wet T-Shirt Competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cup Day began with two crows noisily beating the crap out of a koala outside my window. They chased him as he leapt from one branch to another and one of them landed on his head and pecked him as he groaned sadly. I’ve read enough Shakespeare to recognise a koala\/crow battle as a bona […]<\/p>\n