Equine, women and song

The “dress” on the woman sitting opposite me on the train heading out of London was Hurley-esque. Not Hurley-esque in that it was in any way similar to the pleated monstrosities sported by stick-wielding camogie players, oh no. That would be hideous.

This garment was Hurley-esque in an altogether more aesthetically pleasing fashion. Hurley-esque in that it brought to mind the skimpy-but-expensive strip of black fabric held together by safety pins – aka That Dress – on which Liz Hurley managed to build a lucrative career as a… well, as a whatever it is Liz Hurley does to keep herself in the kind of lavish style that causes her to refer to ordinary folk, people like you and me, as “civilians”.

But enough about Liz, back to that other dress. Luckily for all aboard the train, this lady had the body to carry off her Hurley-esque dress – a halter-neck type arrangement that looked more like a pair of thick braces than a skimpy top struggling admirably to contain her otherwise unfettered ample bosoms, while her very, very short skirt left precious little to the imagination. Not that that stopped me.

Being mere flesh and blood, a veritable mass of contradictions wrapped in skin, I did what any man would do in a similar situation and buried my head in the Racing Post in an effort to unravel the complexities of the 32-runner cavalry charge of a handicap that was the day’s closing race at Royal Ascot, contenting myself with the occasional surreptitious glance when I thought she wasn’t looking. Needless to say, she caught me letching at least four times.

Yes Royal Ascot, for that is where I was heading. And while I have long been a keen student of the turf, the vision sitting before me was proof positive that you don’t necessarily need an interest in horses to enjoy a day out at Royal Ascot. Indeed, the vision sitting opposite me was proof positive that you don’t necessarily need to be at Royal Ascot to enjoy a day out at Royal Ascot. Simply being on board a train heading in the direction of Ascot station is enough, as long as it happens to be travelling on one of the five days of the marathon Royal Meeting.

In an effort to distinguish between the Cheltenham Festival and Royal Ascot, somebody clever once observed that more drink is spilled annually at the former than is swallowed at the latter. You can see the point they were trying to make – Royal Ascot is posh and attracts a more refined breed of punter that often looks more equine than many of the horses they’ve come to bet on. Cheltenham, on the other hand, could never be accused of being posh, not least because it attracts 20,000 uproariously drunk and braying Irishmen every year.

However, if the evidence of what I saw on my first outing to the Royal meeting was anything to go by, the aforementioned sage was wrong: the volume of liquor consumed at Royal Ascot and Cheltenham is the same, it’s just the drinks themselves that are different. Despite being among the riff-raff in the only enclosure where jeans and trainers are permitted (although I didn’t actually see any), Pimms and fine wines appeared to be the tipples of choice and were being consumed by the gallon.

A byword for snobbery Royal Ascot may be, but strip away the portentous pomp of the Queen’s procession and it’s just thousands of boys and girls getting all dickied up for a great day out on the piss.

Another sport you don’t have to be interested in to enjoy over here in England at the moment is cricket. In an effort to promote their sport and attract bigger crowds, the powers that be have introduced a new tournament called the Twenty20 Cup, an abbreviated 20-over version of the sport that starts at 6pm and sees matches last about three hours rather than the usual fortnight.

Although still in its infancy, the Twenty20 Cup has proved a rip-roaring success so far, with fixtures that would previously have attracted four men and a dog being played out in front of capacity crowds as big as 10,000.

The brevity of the game means that playing safe isn’t an option, so batsmen normally renowned for their conservativism are forced to wear willow off every ball that hurtles their way, while the more flamboyant players (yes, such creatures exist) are given free rein to show off and play to the gallery.

Meanwhile on the sidelines, spectators get to sit in the sun drinking copious amounts of beer and heaping loud vocal scorn on shamed players, while availing of the many sideshows employed to help market this all-singing, all-dancing truncated version of cricket: jacuzzis, live music, cricket master classes and barbeques.

The players love it, the fans love it and the traditionalists at Lords, the home of cricket, think it’s an absolute outrage. Small wonder then, that Twenty20 cricket is being lauded as a terrific success and a long overdue stroke of genius. However, whether this revolutionary competition will achieve its primary aim of convincing people to attend “proper” matches (five-day Tests, three-day County Championship matches and one-day internationals) remains to be seen. If, as appears to be the case, less is more, perhaps the only way to get the crowds flocking back to the cricket is to dispense with the actual cricket altogether and simply sell tickets for a five-day drinking marathon in a big field.

As plans go, it’s one that’s so crazy it might just work. For all the live action you get to see from behind the miracles of millinary in the cheap seats at Royal Ascot, you might as well have paid to attend a piss-up in a big field. Nevertheless, I can think of few finer ways of passing a sunny summer’s afternoon.