At around a
quarter past two in the afternoon, I receive a text message asking me, with no
small amount of incredulity, why I’m not at the pub. I’m hunkered down
attending to a difficult piece of writing, one which has had my number for a
month or so and no matter how hard I try, the words fail to fall where I think
they should. Or they do, and then I realise they shouldn’t be there. As such,
the text message is welcome respite, and so I down tools and jump on my bike.
It’s Melbourne Cup
day, the first Tuesday in November, and so most of the country is at the pub.
To be honest, I’d forgotten about ‘the race which stops a nation’, retiring as
usual to my cluttered desk out in the garage in the morning with no thought
other than to finish this beast of an article before eating dinner early and
going to bed.
As it happens
though, I’m chaining my bike to a post in the middle of town and walking in the
front beer garden gate, past two men cheerfully threatening the manager who’s
just ejected them for being too drunk. A police cruiser pulls up in the carpark
and so the scene seems ugly before it’s even begun. Inside though, it’s
cheerful and the hooch is flowing and I find Matt and Marty at a table over in
the corner nursing schooners, not saying much.
I join in their
lack of conversation and we have a few, there’s a brief fashion parade over on
the stage by the front bar, I get another Vic stubbie and we talk about this
and that. Then the race starts, with almost no fanfare – I can’t even see a
screen and have no idea who’s running. Matt’s laid down a few bets and so
strains to see the television set on the wall at the back of the adjacent
dining room.
In three and a
half minutes, it’s over and I turn back to what’s left of my beer and Matt
checks his phone to see if he’s won anything. His horse comes in second, so he
collects $22, which is regarded as a mild success. The pub begins to empty
almost immediately – for a day when all and sundry are wont to get their
mid-week drink on, the pub will close earlier than almost any night of the
year. People start early, finish early, everyone goes home and it’s all over
bar a few fascinators lying under tables, empty champagne glasses scattered
around, smart hats now sweat and bourbon stained, pushed back on heads at
jaunty angles.
Now that the
racing is done, the band fires up, their first words to the dwindling crowd
being that they’re a bit rusty on this first song, they need to work it out so
bear with them, which isn’t something you want to hear from any band. They
confirm our worst fears mere seconds after the vocalist, a short woman in an
even shorter dress who really shouldn’t, opens her mouth and we choke back
what’s left in our glasses and beat a hasty retreat to Marty’s backyard where there
are still two eskys full of ice and beer, left over from his birthday
celebrations the Sunday just gone.
We pick up the
kids from school on the way home and retire to Short Street where it’s calm and
we can put decent music on the stereo, the beer’s already been paid for and
it’s quiet. We continue our sporadic conversation and our wives arrive home
from work and it becomes a mellow Tuesday afternoon drunk where chat flows nice
and your rub your bare feet in the cool grass. Far better than any horse race,
which I had forgotten was even on.
Samuel J. Fell
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