As most of you know, I love to go horse Racing. My son and I are Members of Kempton Park and Sandown Park and we also belong to a Racing Club of Syndicate, call it what you will called the All Weather Racing Club, which means we get Owners Badges to go into the Owners Suite at Kempton, Sandown or Lingfield. Ours is a lovely little group run by our Syndicate Manager Kevin. We all sit at one table, and you can come and go as you please. Now, my gripe here, and it’s a major gripe, isn’t with Kempton, or Sandown, it’s with Lingfield Park, and believe me after yesterday it’s a major gripe if ever there was.
So we all go in, like all groups, we trickle in and we grab a table for the group, and settle down. You get you tea, or coffee. Lunch is normal, soup and a roll, a hot meal and a pudding. Go up and help yourself at whatever time you want, but it’s becoming so Dictatorial and we are all starting to get fed up with it. Plus – now – come on some of you Trainers – you might be Trainers – but get down to earth. My son and I know several. I walk in there a few days before. One Trainer I know quite well and I know Race Going public will know puts his arms around me, kisses my cheek and says Hello Carol, lovely to see you again,. Another we went to see says – Come in you too. Bet you could do with a cup of tea. Treats us like family. That room was full of Trainers. Please don’t treat people like something you’ve just trodden on. It’s not necessary when we’re all having lunch in the same room and eating the same food.
Anyway, my next grip and this is the big on. We all line up for lunch in a big line at Lingfield, just like school dinners. First you get your soup and a roll. Soup comes in a paper cup. I’m a Diabetic Type Two. So I take a roll. No soup. I move to the main course. Pork and Rice, with boiled potatoes, and three kinds if potatoes. Then you go back later for your pudding, which was some kind of African Cake and Custard, which being a Diabetic I couldn’t have and there was no alternative. Absolutely nothing so I missed out on that couse.
Now bearing in mind before your’e allowed any lunch you have to show a Voucher that you’ve been given. Yes, this is the ‘Ultra push Owners Suite” Even the Owners themselves and Trainers have to show their Voucher before they get any lunch!!!! Next thing I know I’m in trouble and being told that I took a roll and only the people who had the soup were allowed a roll! I had ‘illegally’ had a roll!
Now my gripe is why was there such a fuss of my taking a roll because at the end when we left there were dozes of rolls, and why can’t Lingfield Races Owners Suite maybe put something out like maybe a bowl of Fresh fruit in case they have Diabetics?
It’s not as though they will allow you to take your own food in with you anyway, because they won’t. Otherwise I wouldn’t be complaining now.
Anyway then my day got a million times worse. Because of a slight back problem, I usually stay inside and watch the race on one of their t.v.s. Most of the waiting staff in that room are much older. Along comes one of them to collect our glasses with an almost full tray of glasses, loses the tray, every glass smashed, and I was absolutely showered with broken glass. It was everywhere over me. What did they do> Nothing. He said – as both him and the tray wobbled some more? Are you alright? I don’t know – I said – picking broken glass off me and my clothes. He just picked up the glass he could see – walked off and I saw him and two others laughing about it up at the bar. By the time my Son came back from the Race he was watching with the Others I’d actually found some more broken glass in my clothes and laid it on the table.
I’d have thought that maybe the Manager of the Owners Suite might have come over to ask me if I was alright and what had actually happened but obviously I wasn’t that important. One thing I do know is if that had happened in Kempton Park Owners Suite or Sandown Park Owners Suite, they would have been over like a shot to see if I was alright.
And this is one I never thought I would hear but I did. I will keep the name of the Trainer to myself but my son knows who it was. It happened the time before this at Lingfield. I did take a piece of the pudding. It was a square of cake and some custard. I’m 71 and have a slight mobility problem. The Trainer was behind me. His words – I hope your’e going to leave some for other people? Is that what some Trainers are really like? When you see them giving Interviews on T.V? Or maybe this one was just the one that slipped through the net and was a pure arse-hole?
Carol Yeomanson Books 