tim's experiment

To Shatin racecourse today to play the pipes in a sponsor’s “box” – a curious word for a space which could have accomodated a good sized dim sum restaurant. This was the first time I had been on the racecourse while racing was in progress. Alas, such is the size of the horse empire and the small role in its affairs accorded to visiting musicians, that we never actually saw a live horse. The life of a piper consists of a great deal of waiting around for a small burst of actual blowing. But even by those standards this was a long day. A morning rehearsal was cancelled so we waited for about five hours. The good news was that we had a pleasant space, and seats, to do it in.

I had brief glimpses of the rest of the premises. Some large windowless rooms full of screens and seats where people who were not even pretending to be interested in four-legged animals could track the numbers. Bits of transplanted hotel for the use of various privileged groups. Hordes of staff. The Jockey Club appears to be a sort of terrestrial Cathay Pacific Airways. Everything is done as it should be but none of the people doing it look happy. None of the punters seemed to be deterred by the thought that their opulent surroundings had been constructed with the money donated by previous pickers of slow ponies. Did I detect the smell of greed? Perhaps it was my imagination.

What was not my imagination was the occasional whiff of nicotine. It seems that the enthusiasm for banning smoking in crowded open-air spaces has not yet reached horse territory. Perhaps those legal eagles who think a plastic screen makes a dining space “indoors” could set themselves a real challenge by considering the legal status of the parade ring, which nawadays has a huge retracting roof.