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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Upbeat chats make juggling act manageable
PEOPLE like me are very lucky and we should never be allowed to forget it.
Doing a job which most folk reckon isn't actually proper work at all. Getting paid to go racing. And working from home while millions of others squeeze themselves onto the bus, huddle together for warmth on the station platform or fight for space in the rush hour traffic.
But it is not all coffee and 'Homes Under The Hammer' with your feet up. Not on days like this which start at 6am with your daughter Rosa coming into your bedroom saying she is not feeling well. And then proving the point by being sick all over the floor and your wife's slippers.
So school was out of the question and that straightforward news shift became a juggling act, balancing the demands of the desk in Canary Wharf and the much closer-to-home entreaties of a five-year-old girl whose pre-dawn evacuations seemed to do the trick as she was back to her usual bouncy self by mid-morning and wanted to know why Daddy couldn't play.
Not the circumstances in which to be engaged in a heavy news story or a serious investigation, trying to teaseout the tiniest nuance of meaning from something impenetrable, so thank heaven my path was lined by chatty, upbeat men today.
Like Ian Renton, the Arena Leisure racing director delighted to put the usual financial gloom and doom toone side for a moment and reveal a boost in prize money on the all-weather this winter.
Or like Jamie Osborne, the trainer delighted to have booked Frankie Dettori for Never Can Tell in the Cesarewitch and happy to talk up his filly's chances.
And any day which ends in a conversation with Sir Mark Prescott has to go down as a good one. Newmarket's greatest expert on bullfighting, field sports and the fine print of the programme book is a doughty opponent if you are a BHA handicapper but he is invariably a joy for a journalist to speak to. Very intelligent, generously self-deprecating and an incredibly dry sense of humour.
Many years ago in the winner's enclosure on the July Course he spotted that I was wearing a 'Jungle Book' tie (it was a present from the kids, I promise).
"I do like your tie," Sir Mark said. "Very brave."
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