A couple of weeks ago it was the Grand National. Traditionally I have always had a couple of bets on this race, or taken part in a sweep stake, and generally I do okay. Not big bucks, but generally get my stake back. In our family however, it was always my Grandma Bee who had the big wins, or would have done had she ever made it down to the bookies. Every year, she would look down the list of runners and the riders colours, and more often than not, pick the winner.
This year I brought up the list of horses and their riders colours for Ben and Jessica to see. I had chosen L’Ami (my grandmas middle name was Aimee – very technical choice here), and Longshanks. Ben chose Thisthatandtother based entirely on the fact that the jockey’s silks looked like the flag of St George – it was red with a white diagonal cross, but that was close enough for Ben. Jessica went straight for the blue shirt with a star on. Was not interested in any other one.
So we all sat down to watch the race, Ben very excited that the picker of the winning horse would get a prize. Jessica kept a keen lookout for her horse, and kept shouting “blue star” whenever she saw it. Ben was shouting at his horse to “come on, come on”. Sadly his horse decided to stop running about two thirds of the way, and although both of mine did reasonably well, neither of them made it into the top four. Jessica, however. Well, her blue star horse was called Silver Birch, and won at odds of 33-1. So the Bee tradition will continue.
Ben was quite disappointed, and wanted them to all race again, didn’t quite understand they wouldn’t be. I think we may have started something of a gambling habit for him though, yesterday when the London Marathon was on, we saw the start of the wheelchair race.
And Ben wanted to know if he could “pick one” and what his prize would be if that person won. Hmm. It just seemed wrong on so many levels.