The Systems Administrator is back from Cheltenham, slightly dazed by the long drive and the cumulative effect of five late nights and early starts, and a little poorer, but having had a good time. A gang of them has been going for years, nowadays renting a slightly rough-round-the-edges holiday let at mates' rates. Even the Travelodge in Gloucester is two hundred pounds a night in Cheltenham Festival week.
If I could go for one day, I'd go. I have been in the past, and it is a very fine English spectacle. But it is an awfully long way from north Essex, and I don't like it enough to spend an entire week there, let alone go to the trouble and expense of finding someone to look after the cats, and the chickens, and my trays of tiny seedlings in the greenhouse. I don't actually want to spend that long away from the garden at this time of year, especially this year, when I seem to have lost pretty much three months to rain, wind and an endless series of colds (though in the previous two or three years I lost about the same amount of time to snow and ice, so maybe I should face facts and admit that I won't get much outdoor work done between mid November and early March).
The SA spotted instantly that I was running my internet connection via the Three Mobile dongle and not the BT modem. The BT connection failed within about two hours of the SA driving away, and after a couple of goes at unplugging the modem and plugging it in again, I gave up, while by today I'd completely forgotten I was using the dongle. I expect I'd have gone on forgetting until it ran out of credit
Far from being sated with sport, the week had whetted the SA's appetite, and after unloading the car and making some very vague professions of affection, the SA settled down to watch the Midlands Grand National and the rugby, while unravelling from the drive. That was OK by me, since I was going at full tilt planting bulbs when the Jaguar's wheels crunched up behind me on the gravel, and was in no great mood to stop. It's lucky that the SA's birthday falls next week, safely after Cheltenham has finished, and not during the festival, otherwise we would have a rather awkward negotiation each year. The SA has been to every Gold Cup since 1987, and has spent the full week at the festival for about the past twenty years. Imagine the weekend supplement quiz, faced with the situation in which your partner's birthday falls in the middle of a week long racing festival that they want to attend and you don't. Do you (a) insist they spend their birthday with you. It's only horse racing (b) go with them and pretend to enjoy yourself while inwardly seething with resentment and boredom by the middle of day 2 (c) agree to celebrate their birthday when they get back, while worrying that your friends and family will assume that your relationship is in deep trouble? It's just as well that it's a purely hypothetical question.
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