Plunge a bob on that
Computer combusted
Technophile Ron of Wan Chai
Ate pork and repaired
Ron, our man in the Wan Chai Computer Centre, salvaged all the documents. While waiting for the repair I watched two men chattering tiles, playing mah jong. They fancy a flutter here.
That was why I was late and missed the first few races at Happy Valley Racecourse. I didn’t say ‘Hurry up, Ron’ even when he squeaked out a polystyrene box, brimming with pink pork. I let him be, left the man to his own method.
He did it. Saved the day. I am writing on a new laptop. Ron offered to buy my old one. I said, ‘Oh I will be back, Ron’.
And I will be. ‘A pleasure doing business with you’ he said.
Arrived late at the floodlit ring at the bottom of the Valley. Formerly swampland, one of the few areas of flat on the rock. Now surrounded by peeping high-rise flats. A colonial artefact taken over by the locals. Teletext screens show names and figures like curtains of code cascading down the screen, illegible. Lost in the matrix. Stamped on crinkled bet slips and stood sticking to men with liver spotted scalps, stroking their chins, nervously smoking, lead pencils in their clenched grip scratching thin paper. Whispering to themselves. I arrive in time for the last two races: 22.15 and 22.50. Even though the Irish are mad for the gee-gees, race-meetings tend to be over by the early evening news, even on summer nights in Leopardstown or Gowran Park and even the latenight debauchery and revelry of Galway or Cheltenham takes place far from the race track.
Dongcheng District Handicap.
22.15.
6f.
Bet on Starlight. Why?
Jockey was a Neapolitan — Umberto Rispoli. Furthermore, I am a fan of the 2001 track ‘Starlight’ by The Supermen Lovers, particularly because the video features a small unfortunate looking galactic tuber becoming a renowned disc jockey. Root to riches story. Constant thudding bass drum and disco snare matched beating hearts as the race began and ended in a rush.
The horse embarrassed itself.
Finishing 8th.
Fuck you Umberto Rispoli.
You have a dustbin for a heart.
You gave him a crap ride.
Starlight, you useless, hornless unicorn bastard.
My recently made friends told me I had a problem as I went to bet again on the next.
Wangfujing Handicap.
22.50.
1m.
Scan the list, mostly Throwaways. Throwaway. L’étranger. The Outsider. … oh. What is this? Oh this must be the horse. Number 8. Big Bang Bong. A horse from Tully, Co. Kildare.
Aon scéal capall?
Reminded me of a Spike Milligan poem.
On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!…
No mention of horses in Uncle Spike’s poem but if there was surely he would be called Big Bang Bong. Or so I said to myself as I put my Hong Kong Dollars on the horse of that name. I placed the bet and gnawed gums with septuagenarian punters.
Only then did I realise who was the jockey…oh no! It’s that awful conman Rispoli again…who, in the last, had melted like a Neapolitan fior di latte on the dashboard of a hot car…
In the clouds of nervous energy, ice cream daydreams and horsing around the paddock, Happy Valley race course had me thinking about one thing and one thing only:
St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572
Stuck in my mind is a sequence of the film La Reine Margot (1994), that features a young lady with Huguenot blood splatted on her night gown. I was shown it at a young age. The Huguenots were invited to Paris as the young Margot was to be married to the Protestant, Henri Navarre. A truce in blood. She was sister to Regent Catherine De Medici who was the mother to the feeble King Charles IX and by all means a shrewd savage. Born five hundred years ago today, 13th April 1519. She shares a birthday with Beckett (1906) and Heaney (1939).
After assassination attempts against the Huguenot leader, Gaspard de Coligny, before the wedding, tensions were quite clearly running rather high. The wedlock ended in a literal massacre. A marital ambush. The Calvinist kinsmen had come along for merriment but were gifted a massacre. Rioting and routing spreading outwardly from the snail shell arrondissements of Paris.
Dubois’ painting Le Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy shows it all. Dangling limp corpses and flailing arms out the windows and horse hooves stamping in the pools and Catherine de Medici stepping out of the Louvre to inspect the job. Neighbours turned on neighbours in the butchery. Bodies dragged through the street by meat hooks, thrown in the Seine and hands fed to dogs. Huguenots gutted and their heretic tripe was waved around like a scarf in the terraces.
Exodus from France. Flew and fled to South Africa, America, Germany, England, Wales and to Ireland. D’Olier Street. Huguenot Place. Huguenot cemetery. All over. The original ‘Germain’ — like Paris St. Germain or St. Germain des Près on the banks of the Seine.
It mutated in time. Germain to Jermyn. Peculiar one.
Jermaine? Jeremy? Jerwin? Jermine? Jerwine?
The Huguenot blood that splatted on the streets of Paris runs through my veins.
Like Henri and Margot, my parents are from either sides. A Dublin prod and a Corkonian Catholic. Has the People’s Republic of Cork got their independence yet? Malfoy would call me a mud blood of the sectarian variety.
Sale petite Sang-de-Bourbe!
The name ‘Jermyn’ is known for Jermyn Street in Piccadilly, London. A boulevard of fine silks, cravats, of soft smooth handkerchiefs and of Bowlers or Trilbys or Porkpies.
After years, Henri Navarre was allowed to enter Paris if he converted to Catholicism. Paris vaut une messe. A Kingdom for a mass. Father Dougal and keeping the milk float above 4mph and Pat Mustard’s gravelly voice laughing into the phone in the phone box springs to mind. Paris is well worth the mass.
Reformation Wall, Geneva
A statue of Jean Calvin stands in a park in Geneva, in the University that Calvin founded. The statue is part of the Reformer Wall. A big Protestant wall in the centre of Geneva, the ‘Protestant Rome’. Alongside John Knox, Oliver Cromwell, Gaspard de Coligny and other bais, they all look out with disgust at people enjoying their picnics.
I imagine they hate this.
A PICNIC?
Indulgence!
Exuberance!
Extravagance!
Is there TWO chuds of Emmental on that braided Zopf.
Hell awaits your brimmed stomachs.
Cochons!
Cursed are the cheesemongers!
L’enfer, c’est les fromagers!
Jeanboy
Jean Calvin preached many things. He had a little beard and a floppy cap and wagged his big Calvinist finger at anyone having any fun. He believed in ‘predestination’ — when nothing one does on earth will impact on whether one ends up in heaven or hell.
So what’s the point Jeanboy?
Around his tenure in Geneva, the Calvinist council imposed heavy penalties on dancing, swearing and gambling.
Loads of fucking craic, Geneva.
So whenever I place I bet or when I engage in the art of punting, five letters spring into my mind:
WWJCS
What Would Jean Calvin Say?
A tingle of deep Calvinist guilt trickling down from my bloodline. But this doesn’t put a halt to the punter in me. The strong hippophilia on my mother’s side balances it all out.
Before the 2006 World Cup, a friend’s dad introduced me to gambling. He gave me a ten euro bet on top goalscorer. Miroslav Klose. 16/1. I don’t know why I chose him but I did. A son of a German Aussiedler and born in Poland. An outsider of a different ilk but with decent odds. Germany’s highest scorer striker is a Pole. He scored a brace in the opener versus Costa Rica in the bubbly new Allianz Arena in Munich. Built on the rubble from the war. Best Bratwurst I have ever eaten was in that stadium. He scored another two against Ecuador in Berlin at the Olympiastadion. The aerodynamics of the Teimgeist ballooning the ball all over the pitch. He won the golden boot, his last goal against Argentina in the quarters. 170 jonny quidz!
Fuck me. This is easy.
I bought an iPod Nano with the winnings and uploaded Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and listened through my sleeve during the long sermons on a Sunday. My first goldfish was called Sgt. Pepper. May he blub in peace.
Germany lost to Italy in the semis. To a sexy Italian side with Fabio Grosso and Del Piero and Luca Toni running pazzo, waving their hands to their temples in a corkscrew motion. Complemente pazzo. When playing five-a-side in Italy, the Sicilians I played with called me Luca Toni due to my shoulder length hair and aerial threat, now I am more of a Fabio Grosso at Left Back but I often gyrate between the two. Grande giocatore.
Davy Russell throws his arms up to horse heaven after a miracle on Lord Windemere. Celebrates like a nun in Sister Act.
Ah! Lord Windemere in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, 2014. This horse was so beaten that he must have been lent the same travelator that Secretariat hopped on in the Belmont Stakes in 1973. Windemere was so far back. Davy Russell’s job in danger. He was off the screen but came up through the pack and won out of nowhere. 26/1. That is a Foal. ‘Kelvin (a possible mutation of Calvin) the Tipster’ took me to one side when we hugged and cheered and said ‘I didn’t back him, but don’t tell anyone’.
‘Jordy the Tipster’ now breathes in the crisp Canadian perfumes of Kewlowna, British Colombia having forsaken the green fields of Calverstown near the Curragh of Kildare. Last summer, he gave me a tip on The Open: ‘Go for Molinari, he is objectively the best golfer in the world’. The intricate seeding system begged to differ.
I bet on him. He won.
18/1.
Next, ‘Go for Brooks Koepka in the USPGA’.
He won.
16/1.
I found out at the first night of performing at the Edinburgh Fringe. A show called ‘Improv, She Wrote’. Pre show nerves were replaced by post show fever as the big golfer from Jupiter, Florida financed the pitchers of plonk beer - ‘On the Golf!’. An immortalised line. We made libations and screamed and honked Duck Sauce’s ‘Barbara Streisand’ with the gusto of pissed geese.
As if there wasn’t enough sport. For my birthday each year for the last few years I have received a bet slip and a card from a friend of my dad’s who shares a birthday week with me. For my 21st, he gave me a bet on the Kolkata Knight Riders, a vintage JVC Arsenal kit and a card, dedicating the day to myself and Averroes, the Portuguese philosopher born April 14th, 1126.
‘May I have a comet named in my honour!’
Always scribbled on the bet slip a carefully chosen team to win the Indian Premier League Cricket. A balance of big hitters and sensible bowlers and enough of an outsider to make it all worth it. It always fell around exam crunch time and just when the English Premier League ends so often on balmy May evenings I would find myself glued to the Kolkata Knight Riders playing away to the Gujarat Lions, forever clearing the boundaries of Rajkot.
As my mind raced through my gambling career I immediately zap back to Happy Valley.
I play football once a week in the centre of the race course. Last week, I misplaced a volley that soared over on to the turf and I ran to collect it, embarassed. Ducking under the white fence. Sweating and sore muscles and pretending to be Fabio Grosso, a thoroughbred-tongue-dangling-chaff-chewer-overlapping on the field.
I stood where Big Bang Bong was pacing before this race.
Rispoli gripped the reins. Il piccolo (in)fantino.
Big Bang Bong vaut un pari.
They eat horses in France. They love it. I remember when I was young seeing the mosaic mural on the corner of Rue du Roi de Sicile and 15 Rue Vielle du Temple.
Big Bang Bong was well worth a bet!
And they’re off.
Rispoli’s arse pricked up in attention. Patient. He’s in the top four. Hugging the inside. Where is he? Ah fuck he’s drifting back. Beat. Phwaw no! That’s another bloke, also in yellow silks. An entirely different bloke but with his arse also in the air. Big Bang Bong is third. Squished between Merrygowin and Racing Luck. Move you bastards. He’s pushing on, go on. Uh Oh… Har Har Hearted is doing a Windemere…….
……This moment…..the gallops and the whips and the whops and the gallops and Miroslav Klose 16/1 and the iPod nano from Jervis Street and Sgt Pepper’s One And Only Lonely Heart’s Club Band and Lord Windemere and Lady Windemere and her big fat fan and the gleaming Gold Cup and skiving off Physics and Newton’s Third Law of Motion and for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction and purple yellow mud and plunging a phew quid on dat into your big leather case and the man with the yellow teeth hands over the quid and Francesco Molinari, grande giocatore objectively the best e fare una piccolissima scomessa e vincere! vincere! vincere! che cazzo stai facendo! and Arsenal to win the League and flush and Arsenal to win the League and flush and Arsenal to win the league and flushhhhhhh and the Indian cricket and humidity making brows sweaty and crowds cheer and pick pack and pocks and golden skimpies on cheering cheerleaders and the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Gujarat Lions and the Sunrisers Hyderabad and all down to this moment and
and and
and and
and and
and and
BIG
BANG
BONG
Seals it by a nose and I’ve doubled my money!
That’ll go towards a beef intestine noodle soup drank out of a big mug!
A mug’s game!
*I do not have a problem. My accountant father, the acute Calvinist he is, monitors my betting on a big fuck off Excel spreadsheet. Intricate organisation that could only be equalled by Ron in the Wan Chai Computer Centre. There is no need to worry. Only fun.