Farrar Dave. - The Perfect Punter: A Year of Losing Everything and Trying to Win it All Back

A year of losing everything and trying to win it all back

DAVE FARRAR

To the memory of Tony Cooper

Published in the UK in 2012 by
John Wisden & Co
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
www.bloomsbury.com
www.wisden.com

Copyright Dave Farrar 2012

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The author has asserted his moral rights.

Extract from The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (Bloomsbury)
reproduced with permission.

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders
of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently
overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.

For legal purposes the acknowledgements on 282
constitute an extension of this copyright page.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 4081 6491 4

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He shook his head. I saw you lighting a candle. Come here.

I like candles, theyre pretty.

He ran his hands through her hair: You like their flicker. You like their transience. I understand.

Theres something you should know about me, she said, Im a bit of an arsonist. Not serious. I wasnt going to burn down the church. But I am turned on by flame.

He laughed and kissed her face: Hush, he said, hush my love.

In the morning he woke to twin realisations. The first was that she had left him. The second was that his sheets were on fire.

The Finkler Question, Howard Jacobson

Shes where it begins, so I suppose youll want to know what she looks like. All that I can see, every morning when I wake up and think that shes there, is curls and kindness and warmth and the colour red and a smile with a gap in it. And for that flicker of an eyelid my heart leaps at the thought of her. And then shes not there. And thats all that youre getting.

She hated me gambling, but I dont think thats why she left. I dont know because she never told me, but what she did was so considered and so precisely timed, that it couldnt have been the gambling. That would have been a storm down the road in tracksuit bottoms and no make-up, disappear for an hour and then a shaky warning on return. But she walked out when I wasnt there, and left me four lines on a piece of paper. And in case youre wondering, because people always ask, the lines were: Im leaving. Im sorry. Dont call me. Im not coming back. And then she signed her name. All of those times that real life seems like a bad movie, bundled together and scratched onto the back of a London Underground map.

In the midst of the shock, the pain, the terrible emptiness, I needed something to blame, and it couldnt have been me, so I blamed the gambling. If I hadnt been so selfish, if Id realised that she wasnt as understanding as she said she was, if Id known that she was just being kind and patient, but never happy, then maybe Id have had the answers, maybe Id still have her, and maybe I wouldnt be standing here holding a torn piece from her diary. Her diary has lines of poetry, books she had to read, CD ideas and birthday reminders. Mine has a profit and loss column, a sporting calendar and little else.

When something like that happens, and when you have no reason to cling onto, you need something to blame. I was blind to any other cause, and so I blamed the gambling. It was what had got me into this mess, and so it was gambling that would get me out, as I thought that it had so often in the past. It was time to make my deal with the devil, my Faustian apology. Id get punting out of my system, and then Id win her back. Id bet like a demon, Id double my usual stakes, and Id win a small fortune. And then Id take her on holiday, buy her a house, give her the things that I thought she wanted, and everything would be all right. It wouldnt take long, and then Id be done with betting and happy with her. Writing this down for the first time makes me realise how wrong headed it was, and if I could type with one finger while covering my eyes in shame and embarrassment, trust me I would. But back then, it seemed like the perfect idea, the solution to everything, a few moments in time that would make things go back to the way they were. I just chose the wrong time, the worst time.

I dont think Im addicted to gambling. I know how that sounds, because Ive seen the look on peoples faces when I say it. Ive always gambled a lot, and sometimes it costs me money, but then my gamblers logic goes that hobbies and interests cost money. Even when Ive had a bad year, I still have friends whod spend more on a new car or a skiing holiday than I would ever lose at a race meeting, and so thats always been the convenient rationale. I hate cars, I cant ski and I enjoy punting. Plotting a bet and standing by the winning post and watching months of research and bundles of instinct mean that youve predicted the winner of a particular race, a football match, a golf tournament, is one of the best feelings that anyone could ever have. And over the years, I havent been bad. Thereve been shocking days, but I still remember Rooster Booster in the Champion Hurdle, Justin Leonard at the Open, and Superior Premium in my favourite race, the Stewards Cup, back in 1998. There was even the 100-1 shot Nortons Coin, for pennies, in the Cheltenham Gold Cup when I was still a student, when the woman who ran my halls of residence gave me a tip out of the side of her mouth, and when 200 was an awful lot of money. The memories are way better than the financial gain, and its gambling for fun, rather than profit. But theres always just enough success to make you come back for more. Just enough to make you believe that you could make a go of doing it properly for a month. My first English teacher was an Alexander Pope fanatic, and so I learned poem after poem by heart: A little learning is a dangerous thing. Id learned, but never listened.

Because everything that I touched went wrong. Horses were beaten a short head, or fell at the last, or ran their worst race of the season when they were carrying my money. Late chances were missed, putts didnt drop, and I found my betting accounts down by more than theyd ever been and I started to panic. After a few months of carnage, she seemed even further away than she had been at the start of the year, and I had to at least break even. We were a few months down the line and Id already lost half of the sum that Id set aside for this period that was supposed to change my life and win her back. And so I started to chase my losses. And chasing is the worst thing that you can do, and the closest to out and out insanity that Ive ever felt. Or rather not felt. Because I lost all feeling for what I was doing, all sense of the worth of things, and I started to bet on anything, to take prices which were far too short, because I wanted to guarantee a winner, or backed outsiders in the hope of having a big win, the kind of booming win that I now needed to make back what Id lost. And short price, long price, they all lost. I was King Midass hopeless younger brother, and I was running out of time.