Yearly flutter
Today is a big day for horse racing in New Zealand - Melbourne Cup day. Although the cup is held in Australia, it brings our country to a standstill; the race is broadcast live on our tvs, people throughout the country partake in office sweepstakes and everyone tunes in at 5pm to either watch or hear the horses in action. And for me, it is my yearly flutter. I don’t generally spend much money, and my method of choosing is perhaps unorthodox, but it has worked for me in the past. I like to read through the list of competing horses, and the names that jump out at me are where I put my money. Obviously, with small bets, the winnings are small too but also, many times the horse I have picked is an outsider and pays very well. Over the years people have scoffed at the ones I have chosen, but that reaction changes rapidly when the outsider lands me a nice wad of cash. But don’t get me wrong, many years I go empty-handed too.
I can’t remember why I decided to open a TAB account last year; perhaps I wasn’t able to get to town that day, or maybe the Covid restrictions were still impacting on our travel. I did my usual ‘read through the names’, came up with a couple of horses I liked and hey presto one of these placed, and being an outsider, paid quite well. I think I opened my account with $100. When I tried to remove that money I was unable to; perhaps it was too soon. TAB hounded me with bonus bets and good offers over the next few months. I decided, why not, to a bonus bet of $10. Only trouble was, I couldn’t work out how to access this bet and instead, found I had used money from my account to do so. Anyway, long story short, that horse won too. I decided to leave my money where it was, till some such time as it was really needed. And before I knew it, today had arrived.
I found the list of the horses racing today, and although the screen was too small to actually read their names, managed to find four that jumped out at me, one in particular. Usually, I choose two. Stephen decided he was going to pick using his lucky numbers and because I had chosen four, he picked four too. One of these horses matched mine. So now we have nine five-dollar-each-way bets on our seven horses, the ninth because I took a further five-dollar-each-way on the horse that really jumped out at me. I just checked my TAB account balance, which now sits at $101, so I am still $1 better off than I was when I opened the account last year.
I would say I have an addictive personality. I have to be careful and disciplined that I don’t make this betting more than a yearly habit. When I smoked as a teenager, I would consume a packet of cigarettes a day. I tried to cut down, but because I was unable to, I knew the only method was to stop completely. That was hard. I had one failed attempt but was successful on the second. It was always a fear that I would have ‘just one’ cigarette at a party, but the second time, I knew I could never have that ‘just one’ again, for that is what had set me off smoking again after the first failed attempt. Alcohol could have been the same. When my boyfriend and I were living together back in the seventies, we would have a sherry every night, just as his parents did, filling the flagons each time we went to town. That one soon became two and sometimes three. Then one day, I thought to myself, I am 19, if I am having two or three sherries a night now, what will I be consuming when I am 60? I stopped my nightly drinks then and there, saving alcohol for parties only. I have already mentioned my sugar addiction in an earlier blog. That has been an ongoing problem for me throughout my life. Once I get past the first few days of ‘giving up sugar’ I am generally okay and can go for several months without it. But I always seem to break that drought, not because I have an overwhelming urge to consume it, but because, I might think, ‘I used to like this, I am not craving it anymore, one should be all right’. Of course, one never is. I have already put on 14 of the 17 kilograms that I lost last year due to this addiction. One day I will really have to do some work to find the root cause of this. I have done some work over the years but obviously I need to do more.
Gosh, enough of that. There is plenty to do before our horses race at 5pm. I will post the results in tomorrow’s blog.
Update: One of my horses came third and paid out $55. If I hadn’t have had Stephen’s four bets I would have made a $5 profit, but as it stands, we made a loss of $35. Not bad, because I am still better off than I was when I opened the account last year.