Attending for the HCPT supper at the Wimbledon Greyhound Racing Stadium last night was great fun.
Bernie from HCPT Group 729, her two friends one of whom like Bernie herself had years ago lived in Baghdad, the other was a lady who had been a trade mark agent and myself shared a table. The restaurant had been modernised and the food was fine. There were far more HCPT guests and friends there than I had been expecting.
Bernie's trade mark expert friend was great fun and it turned out was able to analyse the greyhounds' form pretty well and place her (£2) bets accordingly. Bernie and I were not as skillful but Bernie recouped most of her losses in the last race by backing a rank outsider which duly romped home for her.
My own losses were recouped not so much on the greyhounds but by a lucky gamble on the HCPT human teams running at half time. Not appreciating that I had placed my stake on the one HCPT girls' team in the race until the end, I then found that they had come first in the race so assisting me back to the black.
One of the grehound races was named after my very old school friend and co founder of HCPT Group 35 Brian whose death a few years ago was for his family, friends and HCPT very sad and untimely: Brian Burgess RIP The last race was fittingly named after the London Beaumont region of the HCPT.
My mother and father both of whom died in their '90s earlier this year, attended an HCPT night at the dogs a few years back and I recall dad being as analytical and as successful in his wagers on the dogs as Bernie's trade mark friend expert was last night though his method of analysing the odds was even more incomprehensible than hers:
mum and dad at the dogs
Many thanks for forwarding the very interesting article on War Horse, Jerry. I'm not surprised that the various productions are proving so successful in different countries.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure whether it's come out yet but another film I would very much like to see is (I think) The Imitation Game which is about Bletchley Park and Alan Turing.
With regard to another of your posts, I'm pretty sure I played cricket against Belmont when I was at prep school, and I have a faint memory of the beautiful abbey.
I wonder whether my father was at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Do they have records of former "pupils"?
All the best
Barnaby
Great minds think alike Barnaby
ReplyDeletemrs maytrees and I saw The Imitation Game at the local cinema on Saturday. Excellent imho though sad. The British upper classes a generation ago had no understanding about individuals like A Turing although he with others on the project must have saved milllions of lives during WWII. Still he was 'pardoned' by QEII in 2013 so the nation does learn - eventually!
And the worst of it, Jerry, is that I thought like the "herd" for a long time! I am not very proud of myself.
ReplyDelete