Thursday March 28th...

After a fairly normal Thursday with a bit of shopping in Paphos followed by my afternoon pickleball session I nipped into see Mum's neighbour Rosie to have my hair cut - a good old trim to get rid of the dry tatty ends this time!

I had to get back fairly quickly because this evening we were having our big night out for charity at a race night with a difference being held at the Bowling Alley in Prodromi.  John has been very keen to support this event because Bryn, who runs the Badminton Club and who has organised the event had his life saved by Polis Hospital and he wanted to raise some money in support.  We never know if we are going to need this facility ourselves so at least it was something that we could all benefit from.

As I said yesterday John was determined to do things properly!

Sheik Al Bad Mintoon

Our Stable was called Horses for Courses and our six horses were named: The Beverley Bullet, The Doncaster Dynamo, The Fontwell Flyer, The Haydock Hurricane, The Ripon Rocket and The Wetherby Whirlwind and our six jockeys were called  Paul Piebald, Jane Jumper, Jill Jodhpur, Helen Hooves, Elaine Equus and Mark Martingale. 

Jill Jodhpur and Sir John Findus-Winalot

Al was dressing up as the Owner Sheik Al Rashid Bad Mintoon with fancy dress supplied by John courtesy of some R&R in Bahrain during the Gulf War and John was the Trainer Sir John Findus-Winalot again dressed for the part in his own clothes!

Helen Hooves

The aim of the game was for the Jockeys to wind in their horse which was attached by string to a bobbin.  You had to wind it the length of the bowling alley and keep your arms touching your legs at all times.  It was much harder than it looked.

Mark Martingale

I went first and was off to a flying start when my string slipped off the middle of the bobbin and started winding round the handle and then I lost all momentum and became and also ran!  The boys from the Latchi Watersports team had obviously been practicing as they stormed home in most of the races!

Paul Piebald

Sir John Findus-Winalot

We had each paid the princely sum of €7.50 each for our entertainment and our supper (which was rather a long time coming but probably tasted all the better as a result).  In fact the lasagne, chips and salad was a lot better than we were expecting even if it did come in an orange polystyrene container!

The maximum you could bet on a horse was €1 and you could only win €2 back if you had a winner.

There was a prize for the best stable - and there are no prizes for guessing who won that award!!!  

There were prizes of chocolates for the race winners (which came in handy whilst we were waiting for food), a prize for the jockey in the final race and raffle prizes which had been donated.

Elaine Equus

Jane Jumper

John and Al got to be jockeys as they were asked to race for the team that Vix and Trev were supposed to have been joining (we had arranged our stable before they moved over) and Bryn had put them on our table so that they would not be sitting on their own.

We all got into the spirit of the evening and at least with eight of us we all had some enthusiastic support during the races although there seemed to be quite a lot of betting against us going on by various team members - but that was probably wise when you saw how the Watersports boys were performing!

Vix and her Trainer

Al was a star and wore his Sheik fancy dress outfit all evening and John took his duties as trainer very seriously making sure that all our jockeys got a good talking to and a crack of the (homemade) whip if necessary!!!

Our table managed to secure four of the six positions in the final so there was some friendly rivalry going on towards the end of the evening.  John was declared the winner so all his hard work paid off in the end!  Whether or not there should have been a steward's enquiry we aren't sure as there was talk that the jockey in lane 1 or 2 might have been close but they weren't racing for a row of houses so no-one was really that bothered.

We don't know where the evening went really - at around 9.00pm we were all starving and couldn't wait for the food and then before we knew it it was gone 11.00pm and we were all turning into pumpkins!

We are going to have to organise some sort of 'do' when we can share out the spoils of the 'bubbly' that John won for the final race.  Most of the chocolates got eaten at the table even by those who normally don't succumb to chocolate but we were all ravenous by about 8.00pm and still had an hour to wait!

John felt fully vindicated for his 'attention to detail' and he was right because our evening was all the better for it.  Roll on the next Fancy Dress opportunity - be afraid friends - be very afraid!

All the photographs can be viewed here:  Racenight Photos