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First Word
Just magic
Secretly we all want to believe in magic, luckily racehorses give us that opportunity
MAGIC, WE ALL LIKE TO BELIEVE IN IT DON’T WE?
The BBC show The Repair Shop revealed that even as adults we want to be believers. The programme films people taking along old family items and heirlooms, which have fallen into disrepair, to a crew of repairing experts based in a workshop in a converted barn. The items can range from pictures to electric goods to music boxes and furniture, but all have some strong family connection to the owner and are items they have been unable to fix themselves or by local tradesmen. They are usually worthless items, but which have limitless sentimental value.
I enjoy my history and there are often fascinating stories behind the items, too – fur-less teddy bears carried in the arms of a child as he or she fled from Eastern Europe to Britain in the face of the WW2 Nazi onslaught, old radios that provided the only form of family entertainment before the arrival of televisions, portraits that have become grimy and grubby and grey but which hold precious memories of former lives.
It is actually quite magical, seeing these items restored to former glories; the repairs bringing back the items to an as-new like condition that ancestors must have enjoyed maybe over 100 years ago.
In a January episode, a middle-aged lady called Minty Barlow brought along a replica mini house. It had been part of a model village tourist attraction in 1970s Cleethorpes and when the local council brought the outdoor display to an end, her father bought two of the houses for their own family garden in Grimsby.
She said on the show: “So my dad was a real character. He’s a real eccentric. But he had this sense of magic. He convinced me that fairies lived here.
“My memory is that [the house] had little chimney pots on, because he made them smoke. I just believed that, 100 per cent, this was the fairy house in the garden, and the fairies were home if the chimney smoked.
“It was just magic. There was never a dull moment growing up in Grimsby with [my parents].”
Barlow’s late parents sounded like a really fun couple (she was brought up in the late 60s and early 70s so maybe there were other influences involved), and they created a dream their daughter could delight in.
Since Barlow lost her parents, sadly the house had become neglected, as Barlow said: “I don’t think fairies would move in how it is right now, I think they’d be quite disgusted!”
She wanted the house renovated so she could reconnect with her parents and honour their memories, to pass on the magic to her daughter, but perhaps, mainly, to feel that “magic” herself again. We are never too old to want to believe in magic. Racing offers the chance for all of us to believe… whether we are a fan following on TV, a first-time part-owner hoping to get into the parade ring and then the winners’ enclosure or even a large-scale owner, who purchases yearlings by the lorry-load hoping to discover a Classic contender, a generation-defining stallion or a blue hen broodmare.
The joy horses can give us, on the racecourse or in the paddock, can be spellbinding. The inherent ability a horse has just by being a horse – the ability to run at over 30 miles an hour, to jump high and at speed, to tolerate a human on
their back asking them to direct those talents in ways they don’t understand; we are blessed. Horses give us abilities that we don’t have ourselves. It is part of the reason why the disgraceful doping case in the US, as reported last month’s edition and on the following pages, is so distasteful.
Aside from the immense welfare issues and the danger that doping has to both horse and human, the attempt to defraud, gain sporting success and vast sums of money through dishonest actions, it sullies our sport and takes the equine magic away.
In reverse, the magnetism of horseracing was evident at Leopardstown on Dublin Racing Festival weekend when Honeysuckle returned to her adoring crowd and fans after collecting her third Irish Champion Hurdle.
With such magnificent horses racing for all of us, and with hosts of foals arriving this spring, we are all part of a magical process.
