Melbourne Cup

Every year it’s the same, Melbourne cup day comes and I suffer from a sense of detachment. Like a Frenchman who doesn’t drink wine I feel alien. I want to belong but can’t seem to get my foot in the stirrup. My first love was Red Wings the plump bay filly, still part wild animal, who loved to run and compete. Why then do I find it so hard to connect on this iconic Australia day?

Each year I resolve to let it pass like Anzac and Australia day, Easter whatever, accepting the mercenary value of the statutory holiday without an emotional hangover, but this day, not even a holiday unless you’re a southerner always seems to get under my skin. Maybe it’s its larrikin appeal as apposed to the war torn or religious that gets me. Whatever it is I always find myself thinking that I need to punt but having no interest in or knowledge of how this is done I’m left outside. I count the bird calls on the morning walk, listen carefully to the guy with blazing eyes who assures me he’s not insane but feels he is turning into Jesus, consider the coincidence of meeting Leith from Bunnings doing the gardening at my next door neighbour bar one and try to see the pattern that will lead to winnings exactly equalling a new clutch. Of course I fail as I have no frame of reference in which to distil this information.

Its not just my inability to profit from this exciting event, as all others surely do, it’s the inability to relate to my fellow man. When the barmaid asks “who are you backing?” or the waiter asks “how did you go?” “Um” is the most coherent they get from me. I go to the TAB and stare as everyone else does at paper lists and screens that are incomprehensible but unlike my fellow starers am petrified least someone ask me, well anything that might reveal my bewildered lack of panache in these matters.

Is there a website at which I can learn, escape, find solace in distain, or at least like minded company and if not is there a need out there for such a service? I mean, does anyone else feel as I do?

R