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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Are you sitting comfortably?
RATHER like my four-year-old daughter Rosa, you don't tend to do what you are told, do you?
At Carlisle the other day a racegoer recognised me and said with a smile: "You know that half the population now know what spube means, don't you?"
"But I wrote 'please, please, please don't look it up'."
"That just makes us more keen to do it."
Well, I really mean it this time. If you are at all squeamish or likely to be upset by medical matters of a delicate nature then please stop reading now.
There is plenty else to go at on here - the BHA handicappers' blog is always worthlooking at and offers far more form insight than I ever bother with.
For today's tale proves that an occupational hazard of this job is that you can end up talking racing in the most unlikely of circumstances.
I was at the GP practice in Otley last Thursday for a minor operation - let's just say it was one designed to ensure that Rosa will be the last of the Carr family line.
Not an obvious place to meet new friends but the surgeon was absolutely fascinated to discover who I worked for and thrilled to have the chance to pour all he knew about racing.
So that he told me with excitement all about his childhood visit to Chester, his patient who was a professional gambler and hisgrandfather who bought a racehorse when he retired - all while he was wielding sharp implements in a very sensitive area, with me lying flat on my back and something of a captive audience.
Most fascinating thing he said was that the operation does not immediately give a human Sadler's Wells the fertility of a Snaafi Dancer - it actually take as long as two years.
When the tubes are cut, that leaves a lot of the guys who do the damage on the departure side of the divide and they need to be flushed out. Which can only be done one way - and it's not by sneezing.
You don't need to have gone through it yourself to know that the process leaves a level of 'intimate soreness' that a Tour de France rider would be proud of and I was glad to be working from home today, rather than striding round Haydock or Musselburgh like John Wayne.
Nor, fortunately, was there much to make me leap from my - padded - seat in the course of a routine news shift. Wonder if I can rustle up a chaise longue for tomorrow?
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