Snakes and Adders

I’ve never liked reptiles very much. It’s something to do with the way they shed their skin, lick their eyelids and issue parking tickets. Oh sorry, that’s traffic wardens... I’ve had trouble telling them apart ever since my wife’s vehicle was issued with a £75 parking penalty outside Marks & Spencer’s. Not that she hadn’t paid for parking you understand, just that she’d made the mistake of outstaying her welcome after handing over our weekly grocery budget.

 

But anyway, back to the reptiles... Our amateur jockeys are so tough that we thought they deserved a different kind of challenge. Negotiating a few hurdles at 30 miles per hour didn’t seem nearly dangerous enough – so last Sunday we added snakes! That’s right: a uniquely dangerous contest in which the first contestant to make it across the snake infested pit on horseback would be named the winner.

 

Okay, it wasn’t actually snakes as in the plural. It was just the one snake, spotted slithering across the track as the horses galloped down the wood-side straight, but it was an Adder. According to Wikipedia, the Common European Adder is poisonous and has a diet which consists mainly of small mammals – so I dare say we were extremely lucky that none of the jockeys fell off in front of it.

 

Anyway, it got me to thinking: what other challenges could we set for our jockeys? I suggested to the team that perhaps we could have the horses jumping through giant rings of fire – which seemed like quite a thrilling idea until they pointed out to me that they already gallop through clouds of barbecue smoke.

 

The next meeting, on Saturday 22^nd July and Monday 24^th July, is the traditional BBQ Weekend. There’ll be barbecue demonstrations and prizes for the most stylish picnics or barbecues within the public enclosures. So gather up your finest folding chairs, your candelabras and stripy picnic blankets – we want to see them all.

 

As always, there are a few ground-rules to follow for those barbecuing at the racecourse: we recommend that you stick to charcoal as we don’t allow gas canisters of the Calor-gas type, unless they come complete with a valid gas safety certificate. We also reserve the right to ask all customers to extinguish their barbecues before the first race, so as not to create those smoky clouds for the jockeys.

 

Finally, when it’s time to go home, please dispense of your quelled barbecue embers in the metal cages provided next to our bins. If they reignite, the fire makes a nasty mess of our nice red plastic wheelie-bins. The molten plastic isn’t very good for the grass either.

 

And watch out for snakes. They’re protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981, so you can’t put them on the barbecue.

 

This week’s tip is Decorated Knight in the Coral Eclipse Stakes at Sandown.