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Welcome to the first Tuesday in November, Melbourne style. I wonder if there’s anywhere else in the world that has a holiday for a three-minute horse race (which is on a Tuesday) thus we celebrate on the Monday (by not going to school and bypassing work if we can) to create a four-day holiday celebration fiesta (including the weekend) to watch 20 horses run around a track.
You’ve gotta love Cup Day!
Today’s post is a viewer’s guide to all things tongue-in-cheek (and probably tongue-in-vat-of-champagne) at Flemington Race Course. For international and Sydney readers (lol) you can look at all things Flemington here.
So hoist yourself up into the saddle, clutch your bridles (but don’t smile and sigh while doing so) toss your manes and champ at your bits. The horses are on the track!
1. Cup Day Festivities begin formally on Cup Eve:
but local lore dictates that you start celebrating on the Friday night before the Tuesday. If you haven’t the intervening Monday off work, you make a quick appointment at the docs for Monday lunchtime to get your medical certificate for the time off, develop a barking cough and splash water on your face to fake a fever.
This is not being slovenly or lying about disease! You do have a fever! Melbourne Cup fever.
2. Run a Melbourne Cup Sweep:
While we don’t do Halloween well, we rock the cup sweep. It’s a matter of buying the newspaper for perhaps the only time in the year, cutting out all the horse’s names and ringing up relatives to see if they’ll ‘buy’ a horse for a dollar. Then, you totally rig the draw, give yourselves all the favourites (who never win) and end up never collecting the money because you (as organizer of the sweep) haven’t come first.
It’s fun.
3. Pretend to be interested in ‘The Fashion on the Field’:
To many of my generation and later, this reeks of the 1950s and 60s, where women donned short skirts (a-la Jean Shrimpton, circa 1965) and paraded around for the stallions and mares in the stands. Talk about mounting thoroughbreds and breeding boredom! Still, race day fashion is considered important, judgeable, topical and is enhanced by the wearing of a hat and/or fascinator.
The only fascinator I’m interested in is the size of the biggest stallion’s fifth leg as they sprint across the dewy field. How can these horses run comfortably, ffs?
4. Eat Chicken and Drink Champagne Even if you are a Vegan Teetotaller:
It’s foul how much chicken is plucked down on race day, but then if none was consumed, the industry would have a poultry day. All I know is that most of the chooks in the farmyard would be saying ‘let’s get the flock outta here’ once the calendar registered it was October and they see the shadow of the axe against the barn door.
Some people have been known to be drunk by 10 am race day. Some have maintained their alcohol intake from Cup Eve and merely topped it up at dawn on the first Tuesday of November. Some revelers eat their chicken leg, can’t find a rubbish bin to place it in, so stick the gnawed down drumstick in their ear. It’s a classy time of year!
5. Find a Filly/Stallion, Visit the Mounting Yard, Hold onto the Reins, Get lucky on the Home Straight and Score on the Turf:
Racing idioms. No innuendo intended.
6. Meet someone who has a heart ‘as big as Phar Lap’s’:
It’s every Melburnian’s dream to meet someone special who has a heart the size of Phar Lap’s (hopefully, that’s not all he/she has that is as big as what Phar Lap had ; )
He was a special stallion, indeed. Consider his heart:
There’s a ratio for his other body bits in there somewhere.
If you do meet your Phar Lap this day, hold onto him/her (she might be a Pharess Lap). Don’t try to tame him/her, let them run free in your paddock, nuzzle your fetlock, stroke your quarters. Then, when he/she rears up and tries to straddle your loins, provide a stable broodmare for them saddle. Don’t let them be your neighbour! Phar Lap/Pharess Lap is too good a bet for this!
On that note, we’re racing. Happy Cup Day to all.
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One Response to Cup Day
It’s nice these days to have Cup Day off. In my University Days, there was always an exam scheduled for the day. And then when I began working at the University, we spent the afternoon collating the exam sat in the morning -- and it was all hands on deck. However, the morning was spent perusing the form guide, wandering down to the TAB in Lygon Street to place bets. And as for the race -- the boss would lay on champagne and nibblies. Ah, those were the days!