TheBanyanTree: The first Tuesday in November . . .

[Roger Pye]

OK, so it might just be a horse-race to you - but Robin won a hundred 
bucks on it - so there!!

roger

Peter Macinnis wrote:

>They say a fool and his money are soon parted, but never is this more
>carefully proven than with the Melbourne Cup.  For heathens and the
>culturally deprived, this is a horse race over two miles, with some 24
>starters (and two hopeful reserves), all carefully handicapped.
>
>There may be more passion involved in some football matches, there may be
>more trembling associated with certain cricketing contests, but nothing
>beats the Melbourne Cup as a national event.  If you want to invade
>Australia, plan to arrive at about 3.20 pm on the first Tuesday in
>November.  You won't even have to fire a shot.
>
>'The Cup' has been run every year since 1861, and when it starts, the whole
>of Australia stops.  Traffic eases in the streets, people stop answering
>their doors, and no phones ring.  In offices, shops, factories, even the
>more laid-back schools, they gather around television sets and radios to
>listen and watch as about twelve tonnes of low-grade meat hurtles
>pointlessly around a circular track to nowhere, surmounted by rather less
>than a tonne of testosterone-deprived diminutive pieces of whip-wielding
>frantic humanity. Any boss who rings a branch office while the race is on
>can by that single act be labelled as a miserable bastard for life, and
>honest staff will begin purloining the office stationery and reading the
>"wanted" ads in the Saturday papers.
>
>Melbourne Cup day is an official holiday in Melbourne, and an effective
>holiday throughout the rest of the nation, and bosses just have to live
>with it.  Melbournites who can afford to do so parade in their best finery,
>quaffing Moet and eating the best caviar.  Melbournites who can afford not
>to take themselves seriously dress up in thongs and bow-ties, SCUBA gear,
>and fancy dress of many kinds, quaffing beer and eating the best meat pies.
> This, they may tell the inquisitive, is because they like to eat horse as
>well as watch it.
>
>In the rest of Australia, anybody who can manage to do so will be off to
>either a Melbourne Cup luncheon that runs until well after the race in
>mid-afternoon.  Those who must be at work waste the entire day organising
>'sweeps', entering into sweeps, and drawing horses in sweeps.
>
>A sweep?  Just a sweepstakes by a shorter name.  Imagine 24 people all
>putting a dollar into a common pool.  Each then draws a spill of paper
>bearing a horse's name from a hat, and so 'draws' that horse.  After the
>race, the $24 is shared between the people who have drawn first, second and
>third (from memory, the shares are something like $12, $8 and $4, but I
>seem to recall $16, $6 and $2 from one sweep where I had the third horse).
>
>As well, most people sneak off to the TAB, once the government-run (now
>privatised) betting shop (a totalisator or pari-mutuel) to place bets on
>any and all horses drawn in the sweeps aforementioned.  Others try to find
>a bookmaker to place their bets, though off-course (SP or starting-price)
>bookies are rare commodities these days.
>
>The effect of the sweeps-inspired betting is to put a great deal of silly
>money onto horses which might as well have borer-riddled wooden legs.
>This, in turn, makes the odds go most peculiar, but that does not stop the
>TAB and the bookies from taking bets, or the public from laying bets.
>
>So if you are planning to invade Australia, the first Tuesday in November
>is the day.  Of course, if you are from New Zealand, forget it: the Kiwis
>have been invading us on that Tuesday for yonks, and decamping the next day
>with 'The Cup' more than once, as well.  Now I must go: my elderly
>neighbour wants me to drive her down to the TAB.
>
>peter
>
>
> _--|\   Peter Macinnis, feral wordsmith, & science gossip.
>/     \  Inexplicable events coordinator and former, 
>\.--._*  designer of large-scale mistaken identity matrixes.
>     v   http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/index.htm
>
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