Hello folks and I hope you and yours are all fine and dandy.
Last weekend was a fairly sporting affair for my family....although not the 'taking part' kind but the 'sitting back and watching' kind. I expect lots of you will know exactly what I mean.
It all started with The Grand National. That once a year racing spectacular that the world and his wife seem to have a bet on. Even people like me who have no clue about horse racing, betting, odds or anything else still think it's worth taking a chance and having a flutter.
As usual, this year I looked at the list of runners on the morning of the race and then chose my two horses by the names that I liked the best. Other people go by the colours the jockey is wearing or the number of the runner but I always go by the names. I liked two immediately...Chance du Roy (reminded me of my Dad) and Rainbow Hunter literally because of the colours of the rainbow. Bizarre, I know.
I texted the kids and told them that I would put £1 on a horse to win for each of them. Once I had their choices the bets were placed and that was it.
There were the usual false starts and early drama as the race started and then it seemed to settle down. Horses fell, jockeys were unseated and I watched the proceedings with my face behind a cushion. You see, I can't resist the drama of the race but I hate the fact that horses get badly injured and destroyed fairly often. The jumps are so high and the horses get so tired. It seems cruel to make them try to jump obstacles that must become more and more dangerous to them the further the race goes on.
Anyway, once the last fence was cleared by the remaining horses, I was able to watch them racing to the finishing post. It was exciting. I had no idea if any of the horses we had backed between us were still in the race but I was caught in the moment and cheered the winning horse over the line.
Needless to say, none of the numerous horses we had backed finished in the top 4. Chance du Roy did finish 6th though and no horses were destroyed and I was happier about that than anything.
6 years ago, as a treat for hubby's 50th birthday, we went as a family to Aintree for The Grand National. It was a great day out and I would recommend anyone to go if they get the chance. Just make sure you take lots of spending money!
Sunday saw The Boat Race, another traditional annual event, seeing a team from Oxford taking on a team from Cambridge.
When I was young this was a very popular televised event. I can remember sitting down with the family to watch it. There was always a lot of media coverage in the week prior to the race and everyone used to talk about it. I'm afraid that, these days, I don't think it's such a popular event but I may be wrong. I certainly don't know anyone who watches it. In fact, my sister and I were talking about it and we didn't even know whether it was on Saturday or Sunday. It's funny how things change. I suppose that there is so much coverage of sport on so many channels these days that we, the viewer, are spoilt for choice. There is always a football match you can watch at the weekend and I think that this last weekend there was also 20/20 cricket, F1 Grand Prix, rugby and tennis to choose from. In fact my daughter and son in law went to the West Ham v Liverpool match on Sunday (Liverpool won 2-1) and another part of the family would have spent a lot of the weekend watching F1.
Then, of course, there was Wrestlemania 30! Yes, I know it's not really 'sport' but it is good to watch. Last year we went to o2 in London to watch 'Raw' and had such a good time...much better than I thought we would.
Anyway, my son was very, very excited about the event at the weekend. So much so that he arranged to have Monday off so that he could stay up until 5am to watch it all. He spent most of Sunday pacing around, playing WWE on PS4 and watching recordings of previous fights. He also got all of us to give him our predictions for who would win what event and wrote down all of our choices.
By the time the coverage started (midnight) I was in bed but son's enthusiasm had rubbed off on me and I was excited to see what the outcome of the matches were going to be.
The main attraction for us was the match between The Undertaker and Brock Lesner - mainly because The Undertaker has been son's favourite wrestler for as long as we can remember and he hadn't lost a Wrestlemania match ever. Unfortunately, Undertaker's winning streak came to an end. Son was traumatised. Very traumatised indeed. But the viewing was made easier because someone that we know was in the front row of the arena in New Orleans and we kept seeing him on the TV screen!
So, the end of an era for The Undertaker and for Wrestlemania and for son.
I know this isn't the normal post from me but I thought a break from the intensity would might make a nice change....not so interesting probably but a change none the less.
TTFN
xxxx
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