What a disaster. I hopped off the train at Caufield and proceeded some 200 metres towards the track when I realised that my hat was still sitting on the train to Frankston. Oh, no! Panic. I’m lost without my hat. What to do? Call for help! Ring The Missus! “Well Geoffrey, what you must do is go back to the station and advise the staff that your hat is on its way to Frankston and could they kindly retrieve it, please”. She’s always full of good advice, The Missus. So I trudge back to the station and report the missing hat and leave my phone number, in case of a miracle.

It is always hard to recover after such a poor start. And so it proves. But my first job is to apply sunscreen to all those parts of my head now exposed to daylight and not covered by the comb over. My second job is to look at the Cup horses. I check out the topweight Admire Ratki. Nice purple ear muffs, but he’s all over the shop. Hand held, restless, head shaking, rearing, pawing and occasionally having a kick. Not my sort of horse. I like my stayers to be calm and relaxed. This horse is clearly frustrated in the tie-up and keen to get on with it. I try to video him but only manage a short burst. I keep returning to his stall after every race and his behaviour doesn’t change.

I glance at my mobile and there’s a missed call. Hmm. I dial the number. “Caulfield?” “I was wondering if you have found a lost hat?” “Wait a minute, mate. Is it a scungy, daggy, greeny-grey canvas thing?” “That’s it. I’ll be there in ten minutes!” So back I go to the station. I can’t believe it. I shake everyone’s hand. Please pass on my congratulations to all the Metro boys at Frankston!

Back at the track in time to see the parade. Admire Ratki still has the earmuffs, but now a stallion chain as well. My final six relaxed horses for the Cup trifecta are Junoob, Moriarty, Lucia Valentina, Rising Romance, Brambles and Araldo. You know the rest. I had the trifecta all wrapped up at the 100 metre mark until that blooming stallion swamped them. Five of my six horses were in the first seven! You’d have to say Admire Ratki will be hard to hold out in The Big Cup.

On the train home I’m holding tightly onto my hat, a losing day, but I’m feeling like a winner. I’m lost without my hat.

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One of my favourite days of the year. There is a touch of anticipation and excitement in the air, the quality of the races is most excellent, and the crowds are quite tolerable. And I can usually get a spot on the second row back at the mounting yard, whereas next week I’ll be lucky to see through the hats.

I keep my powder dry for most of the day. My eye still feels a bit rusty and in need of a conditioning run. But I break out with a lay bet on the favourite Lumosty in the Thousand Guineas when I spot the bar plates. No, no, no! I take $1.70 the place, six minutes before the jump! The horse got checked and jumped away last, but ran home OK for eighth. Maybe the check was the reason for the poor run and not the bar plates. Maybe I was just lucky. Whatever.

I skip the Guineas. Rich Enuff is a standout, prancing around with an arched neck, two strappers and slightly sweating up. Looks like a good horse, but too short to back at $1.30 the place. The horse was just worried out of the prize. I hang around for the mares and my patience is rewarded when Griante streets them. 6.15 pm! What am I doing here? Collecting, that’s what!

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First day back and I jumped straight in on the two-year-old favourite in the first, Mali Rose. The horse fizzled out after looking likely and was later reported to be lame. Not such a good start to the new season! In the fourth Staviva looked the goods but just faded on the line for fifth. None out of two. This is starting to look ugly! The Turnbull looked too hard, so I saved myself for the mares and May’s Dream saved me by just falling into third. One out of three, for a loss on the day. Obviously I’m carrying too much winter condition and need a run or two before I reach peak fitness.

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Last day on the Gold Coast.

The magpies are swooping and the currawongs are free-falling from the high rises. Spring is in the air.

Time to head home.

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Here’s Toolkit.

Cobbled together from spanners and stuff by local artist Andrew Whitehead. How good is that!

Aren’t horses wonderful!

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A momentous day. I wrote the last four lines of puffery for the back cover of Watching More Racehorses. It was like squeezing toothpaste from an exhausted and crumpled tube. Excruciatingly hard, until I realised that puffery is not really required, just straight talking.

So I hope all horsewatchers like: “Forget about picking winners! Discover the secrets of behavioural handicapping! Bet on bad behaviour! Bet on horses to lose!”

Plenty of exclamation marks! Now, off to the proof reader.

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By the time this meeting comes around I’m normally in hibernation, but here I am, out at Sandown for a jumps meeting. It’s unseasonal weather for May, and there must be a quirk in the calendar, because the jumps don’t start till June, and I’m not a jumps fan, but here I am, on a mission. My mission, should I decide to accept it, is to photograph Picture Editor’s browband, for the Rare Stuff chapter in the new book.

With plenty of time to cool my heels I decided to get a shot of the steeplechasers jumping the last fence. Gosh. There were a dozen security guys in red and yellow jackets guarding the length of the straight. The club is obviously very touchy about the anti-jumps brigade. I got past the first couple OK but number five wanted to see my pass. My members ticket did the job. I got up to the rail and the guard there had apoplexy and tried to usher me away from the rail. Photo ID! Photo ID! My members pass wasn’t good enough. I said I was a jumps fan, and that I just wanted a picture of the horses, and I’m a member of the club. Not good enough. Photo ID! Photo ID! Can I see your supervisor. Yes, yes. And the supervisor agrees I could stay, but not on the rail. So my picture is not half as good as those you see in the press. There were at least five photographers there, with three or four cameras on the ground, all triggered by remote control. All hoping for a fall, no doubt. Krase won the race.

In the end I managed a reasonable picture of Picture Editor’s browband, but I’m still mystified as to what they do. It can’t be for sweat control like McEnroe’s head band, because horses don’t seem to sweat there. Maybe it’s for decorative purposes, like Pat Cash’s checkerboard number. Maybe it keeps hair out of the eyes. The strapper suggested that it calmed the horse and was something to do with shadows. Maybe it cuts out overhead glare, like a croupier’s visor. Maybe it’s one of life’s mysteries, like life itself.

And an average picture of a yawn, but a nice one of fetlock boots, and not too bad of the old sticking plaster. I’m off on sabbatical now till October, maybe back for the Turnbull Stakes, definitely the Guineas. Hopefully some of these final photos will make the cut and get into the book. Look out for progress reports.

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A busy day looking at heads and feet. I missed a shot of the custom-made bar plate on Riziz. There must be a serious problem there in the near-side fore as the bar covers not the frog but one of the quarters. The horse came in tenth at $8.50. Garud had the one-eyed blinker and I’m Jake and Wells sported visors, which allow those sneaky peaks behind. I don’t much care for them.

A loser in the two-year-olds and a couple of collects on Gotta Take Care and Gig for not too bad a day. But I’m still spewing about Tooleybuc Kid. I was so busy taking photos of one-eyed blinkers that I wasn’t planning on betting and didn’t check the odds until the last minute. The kid was $1.10 for the place. And was that $1.02 with the books? A quick check of my book had him down as groaning in his stall, which I always interpret as meaning the horse would rather be at home than at the track. I fired in my lay bet for the place with 20 seconds to go and took the odds that were showing in the Lay column – $1.25. The horses jumped, and you know the rest. The bet wasn’t matched, and the horse laboured into fourth.

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With only two weeks of the season left till I go into hibernation I have been trying to finalise the photographs for the book. I scored a couple of good ones today. First, hoof pads. They are usually just a thin piece of plastic or polyurethane covering the sole and frog of the hoof and act as a cushion for the sole and heel. A variant on the hoof pad is the MacPad as seen on Elusive King, which is secured by a half-sized racing plate, and provides extra cushioning to the heel. MacPads are often referred to as “flip-flops” as the unsecured part of the pad can separate from the heel.

Second, I managed a half-decent shot of the barrier blanket on I Am Titanium. Of course, the champion horse Black Caviar is the most famous user of the barrier blanket. The blanket, known in New Zealand as the Monty Roberts blanket, was originally designed by Monty in 1992, and is a double-carpeted blanket that fits behind the saddle and drapes over the hips down to the hocks. The primary objective was to cushion the effect of rails that run along the inside walls of the starting gates. The blanket approved for use in Australia is only a single layer and doesn’t have the weight or padding of Monty’s blanket and only covers the hindquarters without extending down to the hocks. The blanket prevents direct contact with the structure of the barrier stall and is left behind when the horse jumps out. You can just about make out one of the loops on the blanket that is clipped to the barrier and pulls the blanket off when the horse jumps.

And I also got a fair shot of the stallion chain used on Khutulun at the barrier. Occasionally you can observe a chain in the mounting yard, but more usually when a chain is listed in the gear list it is only employed at the barrier. The chain is attached to a halter and applies pressure to the bridge of the nose. The recalcitrant horse can avoid the pressure by moving forwards into the gate.

The barrier blanket is a positive, the stallion chain a negative, and hoof pads are too rare to have much of an opinion.   I Am Titanium came in fifth,  Khutulun was second and Elusive King finished eighth.

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My mate Barry asked me how I was feeling, which is a dangerous thing to do. I told him that I was feeling a bit off because the track is off. And besides, everyone reckons I am sick with a cold, but I just think it’s hay fever. To be on the safe side I went and had my flu and pneumonia injections and now my arm is really sore, but nobody will give me any sympathy. Barry said that you can find sympathy in the dictionary, between “shit” and “syphilis”. I haven’t laughed so much in yonks.

We are descending into winter. There was 12 millimetres of rain in my rain gauge so the track was obviously going to be off. It was raining so much that I couldn’t even open my racebook for the first race, the two-year-olds. Green Roller was a standout in the second so I broke all my rules about wet tracks and went for it and was rewarded with a good third at $2.20. Time to shut up shop. I don’t bet in the wet. The track was immediately downgraded to a Slow 7.

I wandered around listlessly for the rest of the day moaning about the weather and my arm and decided to go home early. But then, you never know when an opportunity may arise, so I had a brief squiz at the last. Another standout, the grey ghost Specter! The horse loomed up to win at the 200, and then suddenly realised that the track was a Slow 7 and that it couldn’t pick up its feet. The horse faded to a weak fourth. I nearly doubled my money, but I know I shouldn’t bet in the wet. Maybe I’ll find some sympathy at home.

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