“His addiction to matters concerning the Turf began one day when he put fifty pence on a horse of Scobie Breasley’s called Hittite Glory. The animal trotted up at 100-1 and Antonio got the idea that he could repeat the performance every day for the rest of his life.”

It was a similar lucky chance that brought us to the glamorous surroundings of Fakenham racecourse, Norfolk, on New Year’s Day.

A trip to the New Year’s Day races is, you see, a tradition so quintessentially English that in 35 continuous years of living in the country, I had participated in it precisely never.

My mother, however, had debuted in the world of racing last New Year’s Day, and developed a system of backing the horse with the longest odds in every race and betting the two pound minimum on each. Having been rewarded by winning her entrance fee, several rounds of drinks AND about fifty quid on an outsider favoured with the sort of odds that would normally indicate a missing limb, she was in bullish mood for 2012.

Or, as Jeffrey Bernard would no doubt have it, going the full Antonio.

My father, perhaps remembering his own father, who gambled away not only his wife’s inheritance but also his sons’ at Monte Carlo, chose to eschew Fakenham’s myriad charms.

The real tragedy of Monte Carlo? My grandfather was a Life Master at chess and a Grand Master at bridge. That is to say, pretty damn good at chess and a world class player of cards. He didn’t, however, play poker. Not even blackjack. He blew the lot on goddamn roulette…

But I digress.

Now, Z has been studying probability in maths. And, no, this does not mean we’ve abandoned unschooling. He has, however, decided that he would like to learn physics and, given I have even less grasp on exponents and coefficients than I do on fractions, he has wisely requested to learn said subject with someone with a degree in it and a decent handle on maths.

Anywise, probability in hand, albeit not the immutable law that the bookie always wins, he was going to stick a fiver on two of the favourites, the ones, perhaps not coincidentally, with names like something out of World of Warcraft.

Me? Fuelled by my reading of Jeffrey Bernard, I was reckoning on one accumulator, and a series of rank outsiders.

My brother was going to be betting on mid-weighted outsiders.

Between us, we figured that if a cow were to win at Fakenham, we ought, collectively, to be up on the day.

It would be fair to say that entrance to the members’ enclosure at Fakenham Racecourse is rather less sartorially challenging than at better known fixtures on the British racing calendar, such as Ascot and Cheltenham. The drinks are, also, rather better priced.

Quilted jackets, Barbours, wellies and those odd green moleskin trousers folk wear in the countryside paired beautifully with the kind of rosy English faces that forced potato comparisons from George Orwell and make Americans say unkind things about the nation’s teeth.

Or, as my mother put it, “You do look nice. I’m not sure there’s going to be anyone here worth looking nice for, though…”

Anywise. The members enclosure is great. You are right up by the finish line, there’s mulled wine on tap, barely a queue for the bar, no stag parties or hen parties, and, in an uncharacteristically balmy January, with the mercury close to double figures, it’s a great way to spend the day.

Particularly, of course, if you win.

Now, my life has been characterised by a sort of insane optimism interspersed with stretches of doldrums. Ride a motorbike from Bali to Papua? No problemo! Learn Chinese in a month? Hell yeah! Produce 80,000 words over the Christmas break? Easy-peasy…

So, not withstanding the laws of mathematics and the evident absence of 80,000 words (or, for that matter, arrival in Papua), I was pretty confident that one or the other of us would back a winner at 30-1 or over.

There were only three horses running in the first race. My outsider ran great guns from the start, and, entering the final lap, I was fully in the swing of things and screaming for him.

It came in third.

On the second race, we, collectively, covered two-thirds of the six-horse field. No win. But at least my place bets for the place pot were holding.

By the start of the third race, we had become accustomed to the phenomenon of the rank outsider which leads from the start then gets overtaken in the manner of a dodgem on the M25 by everything with four legs over the last half mile.

Is “bolt” the correct verb for this?

“You’ve got half the field covered there, love,” said the friendly bookie, as I trailed our puddle of shrapnel and a calmly confident Z over to his table.

Z and I put our money on the second favourite, Safe Investment. It wasn’t.

As a family, it appeared, we had covered the wrong half.

Another round. “Right,” says my mother. “There are only four horses in the next race. If we each back a different one, one of us HAS to win.”

Due to familial miscommunications, we ended up with a whole tenner riding on the four. My mother’s pick came in. For a fiver. My bet to place came last, ending my interest in the place pot.

Her round. Again.

By this point both I and, unfortunately, my spawn were, ahem, “stretching” our budget for the races, raising our stakes to the princely height of three pounds. Both my mother and I had decided to throw feminism to the winds, quit betting on female jockeys, and had adjusted our sights to feel a mild glow of proprietorial pleasure when a horse we’d bet on actually finished the course.

In the penultimate race, Z had three quid on a rank outsider at 40 to 1 and three quid on the all out favourite at very much less than that, while I’d developed an irrational faith in a jockey named Matt Crawley largely because he’d won the first race.

Z’s outsider developed a convincing lead and held it for two and a half laps, Z screaming him on from the fence. At the second-to-last fence the favourite passed him.

No worries! He had three quid on this one too.

Then, at the final fence, the favourite stopped dead and refused to jump.

It was, as they say, the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“Right!” he exclaimed, a whole twelve quid down on the day and scrumpling up his betting slips in the manner of a much older male, one of those dark scribbled gloom clouds you get in cartoons hovering over his head. “I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to go and sit in the car.”

A couple with a baby behind us jumped up and down, screaming and hugging each other like something out of a National Lottery advert. They had won, they said, over a thousand pounds.

“No,” said Z, resisting all forms of blandishment. “I DO NOT WANT A HOT CHOCOLATE. I WANT TO SIT IN THE CAR.”

“It’s been an odd sort of day,” said one of the chaps beside us, who seemed to know what he was talking about. “Normally at Fakenham you’ll always get at least one that comes in at 8-1 or better over the day.”

My brother’s rank outsider led the last race only to lose by a short head.

“Well,” said my ma. “I think it’s been an excellent day out. But, you know, I really think Z genuinely thought he’d win.”

The post A Day At The Races appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

“Excuse me, Theodora, it is me, Komang.”

I surface, groggily, realizing that my nightdress has tucked itself into my knickers and the blanket has slipped. “Oh, Komang, I’m sorry,” I say, adjusting myself hastily.

Z hosted his first sleepover last night, a process which has required a degree of rearrangement of our modest abode.

To wit, relocating me to the verandah.

Having given birth –- a process which involves an apparently endless series of strange gentlemen shoving their hands up one’s vajazzle with, at least on the British National Health Service at shift change time on a Saturday night, no such thing as a by-your-leave –- I’m actually quite hard to embarrass. Nonetheless, I am a little flustered.

“About the bike,” Komang says. “I have brought you the new bike we talked about.”

“Yes, yes,” I say. “I parked your bike outside the pizzeria. Let me just find my keys…”

In more than two months in this little house, I have yet to settle on the routine place where I leave my keys. And, with barely a fortnight left before we say goodbye to it, I doubt I will ever do so. I head inside to begin the daily quest.

Z is sleeping. I assume R is in the bathroom, but figure I’d better check.

I knock on the door. No response.

I open the door. R is not there.

I check back in the main room. R is not there, either.

“R?” I yell, hopefully. No response.

Fuck! The first sleepover at our place and I have misplaced a child. Panic surges, falls, surges again.

“Z!” I say. “Wake up!!! Where’s R?”

“How should I know?” he says. “I just woke up.”

We are neither of us at our best in the mornings.

Nightmarish scenarios flicker through my head.

I discount child abduction. This is globally extremely rare and, I think, unheard of on this small, populous island where everyone knows everyone’s business.

“Well, he’s gone,” I say. “Wake up! He’s missing.”

“I’m sure he’s fine, Mum,” Z says groggily. “He’s probably gone for a walk.”

Has R decided to walk all 5k back to his house, finding us unwakeable?

He’ll find the way. But how on earth can I face his mother if he has?

Has he woken up, bored, and summoned his driver to pick him up? (A man, incidentally, whose brutal cutting up of vehicles including taxis would put the average London cabbie to shame.)

No. He has no phone and can’t work mine.

I wander outside, stick my head out into the rice paddies. No sign of R in either direction. “R!” I yell. “R!”

Komang has been hovering tactfully, watching this insanity with a general lack of scrute and a Buddha-esque expression. He’s in his 20s, but looks about nineteen.

“Have you found your keys?” he asks.

“No!” I say. “My son’s friend is missing.”

“You think he has your keys?” asks Komang. Then, panic dawning, “You think he has taken the bike, maybe?!”

“No,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I am sure he hasn’t taken the bike. But I am worried because he is ten years old and I don’t know where he is.”

Could R have taken the change from last night’s game of table football to buy sweets? Has he just gone off for a wander in the rice fields and got lost?

What the fuckity-fuck am I going to do???

I am supposed to meet a friend for breakfast in about 20 minutes time. This is not a situation which lends itself to text message summary.

R had told us he was an early riser, up at 6.30 at the very latest, so I figured that, rather than set an alarm, I’d just wait for the boy noise to wake me up.

There had been some boy noise. But, as I’d been previously focused on sleeping through the noise of Bali Spirit revelers stumbling past our home en route to their residences, it had hardly registered.

And now, Z’s guest is AWOL.

I stand in front of the drooping boudoir in which I have spent a fitful night and scan the rice fields, yelling R’s name pointlessly.

One thing no one ever tells you about mosquito nets, by the way, is that the things are borderline useless without yards of string, which we have, plus nails, which we do not.

“No worries, Theodora,” says Komang. “Take your time.”

Balinese rarely raise their voices.

I figure I will take a systematic approach.

Sending Z out to look for R is a recipe for farce, disaster or, most likely, both.

Komang and I start at the path on the street where our new red motorbike is parked, across the road from the old one outside the pizzeria, and also the location of the sweet shop.

“Ah!” says Komang, with a note of relief. “There is my bike.”

“Yes,” I say. “The bike is absolutely fine. I know where the bike is.”

“Have you seen a child?” I ask the guy at the warung. He shakes his head.

“I have a new helmet for you,” says Komang. He lifts up the seat and clears his possessions from the storage space. “Because it is new, you need to put it in here, not leave it on the bike.”

Nobody is bothered but me, of course.

Balinese children walk to school unescorted from the age of about five.

Z, too, is allowed out unescorted on short, time-specified trips.

R was born in Bali. He’s more than capable of crossing roads and far too experienced to go tumbling into ravines.

“Thanks,” I say.

It is a fine helmet, all shiny and new with a working catch.

Unlike the old one which blows around in the breeze if I stray over 50kph, it looks like it will provide some protection.

“Three more days?” Komang says.

“Yes,” I say. We hadn’t actually planned the sleepover. I’d taken the boys to a waterpark for the day, Z had invited R to sleep over and R’s mother had agreed.

“That will be one hundred and five.” I shell out one hundred and five thousand rupiah.

We return to the house. Z has surfaced. I do not check the time but I can tell we are late for breakfast.

Since search party activities would be premature, I decide to start hunting for my keys, instead. The desk is a puddle of artworks and books. They are not there.

OK, I think, I’ll take another look for R.

I stick my head out into the fields.

R is sauntering up the path, half a green coconut in his hand.

“Oh,” I say. “There you are!”

“Yes,” he says. “I woke up early and I went for a walk. I tried to climb the tree to get a coconut, then a guy came and helped me and cut it open for me. Would you like some?”

“No thanks,” I say, deciding not to address the ethics of coconut acquisition. “But, look, next time you go for a walk, can you just wake me up and tell me? Or leave me a note, or something?”

“Sure,” he says. “Would Z like any?”

Komang is hovering. We are exchanging bikes because I only want this one for a few more days as I am buying one, and he’s got a tourist wanting to hire his for 20 days, for a price, I would figure from his enthusiasm, at least 50% if not 100% over what I am paying. So he’s borrowed a bike from his mate to rent to me.

“Z,” I say. “Have you seen my keys?”

I begin the hunt for the keys in earnest. Not in the bathroom. Not by the cooker. Not in my camera bag. Not in my day bag. Not on the desk…

“Where shall I put the coconut?” asks R.

“I don’t know!” I say. “The fridge?”

“She always does this,” Z explains to R, wearily. “She never, ever knows where she has put her keys.”

“Z!” I say. “Why don’t you just get dressed? And, R, have you brushed your teeth?”

“Well, we didn’t actually eat anything after I brushed them last night,” R says. “So I figure I don’t really need to.”

“I think you should both brush your teeth,” I say. “And, Z, you need to get your clothes on.” R sleeps in his.

I check on the dressing shelf. No sign of the bastard keys. My searching turns to a frantic kind of burrowing and I begin to swear.

“No worries,” Komang says. “Slowly, slowly…”

“What’s this?” asks R, waving a packet of pink crystals.

“They’re crystals, for crystal growing,” I say.

“Can we make some?”

“Not now!” I say. “We are meeting people for breakfast.”

I find my keys under a snow drift of artwork on the desk. I swap the old bike’s key for the new one’s and Komang departs.

The replacement bike is red, and lovely, a newer take on the model I have been driving.

However, I would prefer to be debuting it without any passengers, let alone two boys with a tendency to wriggle and a combined weight significantly more than my own.

I am feeling a lot like Gerald Durrell’s mother in My Family and Other Animals. A sort of vague, flustered bewilderment that is somehow very English.

I turn to Z, open my mouth to start yelling at him to get dressed, and find he has done so already. His shirt is not exactly clean, but is marginally less grubby than R’s. I shove some entertainment into my day bag.

“OK guys,” I say. “Sandals, helmets, let’s go!”

We wobble up the road. Boy motion and boy size means I can see close to zero in either of my mirrors, but I am buggered if I am going to start adjusting them at this stage.

We take it slow.

I am not quite sure how late we are to breakfast, but at least our friends are still there. I try and explain why we are late, but I am not sure it makes much sense.

The post In Which I Lose A Child and Gain a Motorcycle appeared first on EscapeArtistes.