Posted on by Cathy

Cup Day

First Tuesday in November – Melbourne Cup Day!

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A public holiday for most Victorians

The day of a race that supposedly stops the nation 🙂

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Cup

Yes, a day off work to go to Flemington and watch or to sit at home (or elsewhere) and watch on a screen big or small the highlight of the Spring Racing Carnival.  Usually accompanied by a drink or two and lots of goodies to eat.

It was cool overnight then dry and sunny which was good because there aren’t that many horses that like running two miles on a wet track.  Final result was Prince of Penzance won, and get this, had a female jockey.  Yes, for the first time the Cup (first run in 1861) was won by a horse ridden by a woman.  There were some lucky punters as well, odds were 100/1 so if you handed over $5 you’d come away with $500.  No such profit for me though, my days of looking at the odds and placing a bet have long gone now.

Not a lot of movement in our house today apart from a quick half hour walk for me early on then a wander round the garden picking up, pulling out and binning followed by lots of sitting and reading.  I picked up an old copy of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe that has had me fascinated for part of the afternoon. The writing is so very 1950’s even old fashioned in places with lots of words and phrases I remember from my growing up post war.  Make a pax (call a truce) – bag something (I bags that,) – calling someone batty.  The old fashioned By jove, you’re right, I say old man, sharps the word, weren’t really used by my Irish parents, more upper class lol

Watched the race at 3pm then picked up ‘me knitting needles’.  I’m only at chapter 13 in the book so looking forward to another few hours to find out how it finishes.  Something that got me thinking about though was the use of the word ‘perfectly’ that cropped up quite a lot in the early chapters – perfectly beastly, perfectly terrible, perfectly dreadful, perfectly all right – I’ve been wondering whether kids use a word in that fashion all the time these days.  Maybe ‘absolutely’ – what do you think?

16 Replies to “Cup Day”

  1. I wish the Stanley Cup was a daytime event and we got a day off work for it! I grew up reading the E. Nesbit books (Railway Children, Five Children and It, etc.) and they used similar language. I read so much, I’m surprised I didn’t end up speaking that way.

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    1. The day off is just for the one state Dar – do you think you’d have a hard job convincing NS provincial government to gazette one? There’d be other provinces wanting one as well lol

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  5. I think writers get hung up on a favorite word and use it over and over in their prose. I have trouble with ‘simply’ myself. Simply beautiful, simply awful, simply tasteless …

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  6. Some interesting writing in today’s Age about Cup speeches failing to focus on the significance of a female jockey rodding the Cup winner. I can’t think of any other popular words. Absolutely is certainly one.

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  8. I think, “perfectly happy” is still quite common. As kids we certainly “bagged” things and called people “batty” and “nutty”.

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