Sublime Or What?...

..The Good Lord has spared me the urge ever to quit gambling during Lent, bless Him, which is just as well as the Cheltenham Festival is always slap bang in the middle of the season of abstinence. (The better Festival will manage to wrap itself around March 17th - St. Patrick's Day - and the best of the best will cause the Gold Cup to fall on that very sacred day.)

I am not a hunting parson - not through any overwhelming objection in principle, more from a knowledge that any fall would shatter my rib cage like so much bone-china crockery - but I am a punting parson. (Even have the boots, if that analogy means anything to you.)

Shocked you may be, but there it is. Anyways as one of the great Irish trainers said only yesterday "Cheltenham's just like going to Church - you get on your knees and pray!" Or to re-phrase an old Benedictine catechism: "Do you bet when you're praying?" "Certainly not, but I always pray when I bet!"

But do I attend the Festival itself, do I so always order my parochial diary as to be free for these special four days? Sadly not, one is too hooked on duty to leave the place to fend for itself even for a brief spell, and as year follows year I find myself wondering if I shall ever be there in person as well as in spirit.

Mayhap in compensation for this enduring self-denial, the same Good Lord has vouchsafed for me to be a pretty good shot at spotting a winner or three each year. (Time was indeed when one's tip for the Gold Cup was counted the best advice a parson could give his flock in any one calendar year. Been a bit quiet on that front for a spell mind you.)

So once again with the scent of Spring and fresh hope in one's nostrils and the distant sound of stirring equine voices and hooves in one's ear, one turned this morning to the racing pages of...The Sun! Well yes, I would blush for the shame of it had it been mine own purchase. Only I shan't as someone, oddly, had left a copy in the Vestry after Mattins, so skipping - as one must - every so swiftly past the Third Page I had a peek at the form as presented to the common man.

And who should one find but dear Clement Freud sounding forth on possibilities. ('Possibilities' is a great approach for a tipster - they require no solid evidence or indeed any shame in their not being actual winners, merely the opportunity for a good crow should they succeed.) You can probably guess where this is all heading and you would not be wrong.

Herr Freud's great descendant happened to mention in passing that he had a fond eye for a horse called Sublimity for the Champion Hurdle today. That was more than sufficient for self to entrust a goodly portion of the month's stipend into the hands of Old Vic, who runs a small emporium off the High Street. (There may not be much science in my method, but there is some sense: Sublimity is known to prefer the firmer going over many of his rivals. I reasoned that this drying weather would therefore favour him and I was not to be proven wrong!)

Fine place Vic's - not much more than his front parlour made available for reclining punters to pass some several lazy hours chatting and writing the odd betting slip, just to show willing. (Not entirely sure what Old Mrs Vic. makes of her house being thus used, though the steady stream of income he inevitably can offer to the domestic economy must be appreciated I am sure.)

One didn't have the time to spare to stay for the race itself - there being official visits to be made etc., - but on returning some hour or so after one could tell immediately from Old Vic's facial expression that, by the most happy happenstance, one's chosen nag had sailed home at 16-1, some several lengths in front of one of the well-backed chancers.

You might imagine I am alluding to a thunderous countenance here, but no Old Vic is actually rather pleased when a client pulls off a Big 'Un. True generosity of human spirit mixed with a well-founded knowledge from experience that winnings paid out are generally mainly at worst extended loans, about accounts for the cheery grin that greets the winning punter.

The actual moment of the awarding of a sizable pay-out is always conducted with a certain severe understatement on the recipient's part. It would not be seemly to seem too, too pleased to be so many quids in, nor indeed would it be nice to rejoice too openly in front of other players who have not been so fortunate. Nonetheless it would have been equally ungracious - nay plain pretentious - to pretend that such an amount was but an every day occurrence.

So a few jocular remarks were allowed to play back and forth, all more or less along the lines of "Need help carrying that then Parson?" or "You'll not be minding my being a bit behind with the tithe money now?" or - genuinely alarming requiring a good laugh-off - "How much not to tell the Mrs?" (Not that H entirely objects to gambling as a thing in itself, though she can fret when sums the sharp end of between three to four figures are involved, which is utterly understandable of course.)

And what, I hear you asking nay pleading, do I therefore have to say on the subject of the Gold Cup itself? Well, funnily enough I shan't be here to predict the winner on the day, having agreed to act as stand-in for the neighbourly Vicar of S (who tells me he has a sick great-aunt to visit - bet she lives in Cheltenham or environs!), so all I can tell you by way of a clue at this juncture is that this year there is a fancied outsider called 'Our Vic', generously priced at between 25 - 40/1 at present.

Old Vic - Our Vic - geddit? It's got to be a possibility. Only a possibility mind!

So fingers crossed and happy punting.