No ice-cream please

C

Cantoris

At the Start
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I'm going to be a bit non PC here. An article in the RP today about a lad and his mother at Salisbury. They bought two ice-creams in Tatts and went into Members to be told they couldn't bring ice-cream into Members. they were asked to leave.

Salisbury general manager Jeremy Martin "We have a relaxed dress code for membes, but we can't have people wnadering around eating food. People pay extra for the exclusivity in members. They don't expect to bump into someone carrying an ice-cream".

What a load of cobblers. Thanks be to god the Irish courses have a more sensible approach (although not many have a reserved enclosure anymore) and you can eat whatever you want in Punchestown's reserve enclosure and even have a drink in the stand with an open neck collar. Are English courses living in the Victorian times when women wore corsets and men went skiing in their suits!!
 
A bizarre response from Martin; reading between the lines, the racegoer in question seems to have got a bit lairy, and if the response from the track was along those lines then I'd understand it, but the guff about members being outraged by ice cream cones is utter tripe.
 
Absolutely ridiculous, it's things like this which put people off racing and going to racecourses which are ran like Stalinist dictatorships. I bet they don't mind people woofing strawberries and cream in Members. I can't believe that one person would be offended by someone eating an ice cream on one of the hottest days of the year.

Reminds me of when I went to Ponty once on a scorching day and I took a bottle of water past a security jobsworth between the stand and the parade ring and he said all drinks had to be consumed in the bars or stands, can understand it with alcohol but water?! At Newbury, you're allowed to drink in about 3 places in the whole course too.

Jeremy Martin sounds like an absolute prick frankly and one that racing can do without.
 
Surely it's in his interests to defend the course and point out the person was being lairy rather than come out with that shite and make himself sound like a tool? I also struggle to believe "a lad and his mother" were being lairy at Salisbury at a midweek meeting.
 
If Jeremy Martin was the guy we were dealing with in the paddock when introducing the sponsors of their second and fifth races (ie bloke who announces the winning connections when they receive their prize), the general consensus amongst us was that 'prick' would be a charitable description.....

I was just talking to someone about the very organisation of the hospitality marquee where Ashbrittle Stud were holding their do, how efficient and plesant the staff were and what alovely dayithad been with two exceptions - said bloke above and an extremely rude gatefecker who ticked me off for not havng my badge easily visible. It was on the shoulder strap of my handbag, quite clear enoguh, as the outfit I was wearing didn't have a button that I could have attached my badge to...

I seriously considered giving him the famous Turner put down - my companion was gob-smacked I didn't - but as I was a guest of the Ashbrittle and feeling in a good mood I jist looked at him... He makes a nice stone statue !
 
Gamla Stan said:
"a lad and his mother"
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Mother is 75 so "lad" might have been wrong description!! Let's use fella instead!!

First time I was in York was in the early nineties and it was swealtering day. We knew the dress code was jackets so my parents had bought me one but when we arrived in the security guard came over and said I needed to wear a tie. I was only 14 or 15. But he was pretty nice when he heard our accents and we told him we had checked the dress code and made the effort with jackets. So he brought me off to the course shop, arranged for a tie and said to drop it back at the end of the day. Very nice of him and pleasant but we were still miffed that a young lad would have to wear a suit and tie when it was 30 degrees.
 
They can't naturally behave like civil people do, so they insist on using a dress-code to make them at least look like the civil people ... who, of course, have to follow the same dress-code ... as these monkeys.

Pure waste of pea-nuts! :)
 
Couldn't believe it when I read this in the paper this morning,might have to have an ice cream on Sunday if Divine Spirit runs in the old fogies sprint.

Don't start me on the dress codes and badges,the amount of times badges fall off and because I end up tying them so tightly as to prevent a repeat I can never get them back off afterwards!!
 
A Christ Church tie does the trick ;)

Some of these smaller courses do have an extremely high and over-inflated opinion of themselves. The tie thing odes seem to be soemthign of Yorkshire problem as the only times I've encountered have been Thirsk, and Doncaster but clearly York and even Pontefract (of all bloody places) seem to be perpetuating it. I seem to think Chester is another minor track where they do it, and I was refused entry at Newbury once, before joining a ground and sneaking back in though that involved the cardinal sin of jeans I think, or was it trainers? Can't remember what ever they were I was bombed out for, they were borderline in their design and would have passed a cursory once over, but probably fallen foul of a closer HM Customs type of inspection.
 
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As an x-"Ice Cream" man I am,a not.a happy he should get a life,

is it o.k. to walk outside and go smack into a cone, coz one has one's nose so farr up

in the air.?..........Twat!!!!!
 
I'm surprised at Jeremy - he was quite amusing when he worked as Clerk of the Course at Brighton. Course staff frequently aren't given the latitude to use common sense, unfortunately. It's taken a period of years for management to get to grips with the concept of water in plastic bottles not representing the same potential threat to safety as a glass bottle or even a glass. People used to break glasses and with small kids pronking around all the time, it was always a problem for cleaning crews to get to the debris before little Tamsin Snotworth-Piddlepants deliberately fell into it, thus ruining her chances of marriage to a belted earl. Staff are usually - but not always - told that plastic 'glasses' and bottles are perfectly okay to wander around with in any of the enclosures. It's the inconsistency of information trickling down which causes the annoyance to racegoers.

Brighton asks that racegoers don't wear ripped and torn jeans, football shirts (in case of drunken tribal disagreements, not because they're aesthetically hideous), and that men keep tops on. We have owners coming in in tee-shirts and jeans, so we can hardly remonstrate with a public similarly attired. Provided people aren't indecently exposing themselves and don't appear to have wrested their attire from 10 years on a tramp's back, I don't care what they wear! Just come racing, have a great day, and go home safely.
 
krizon said:
We have owners coming in in tee-shirts and jeans, so we can hardly remonstrate with a public similarly attired.
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Exactly, and trainers. The number of times we have commented on the 'state' of people in the pre parade or paddock who are either of the above. Not wishing to get into a 'well they pay the bills/there'd be no racing without them' argument, they have to walk through the same enclosures, one would think they would make at least a half effort. I have been with trainers and owners when their horses have been running as their guest, and wouldn't dream of turning up without being even very basically smartly dressed. (Obviously my view of smart, but certainly wouldn't include denim and tee shirts)
 
Breaking News from the RP... Seems they have realised what a bunch of tw*ts they made themselves look, still not done the decent thing and apologised and removed a ridiculous policy.

SALISBURY general manager Jeremy Martin said that the racecourse's refusal to allow food and drink into the member's enclosure would be reviewed in the coming weeks following a dispute over ice-creams at the track on Wednesday.

While a number of Britain's biggest tracks demonstrated a more flexible attitude, adopting a policy that summer and ice creams "go together", racegoer Russell Gibbs was threatened with ejection from Salisbury after he and his 75-year-old mother attempted to enter the member's enclosure while carrying cornets.

Martin said he would be interested to hear any feedback from Wednesday's incident but stressed that the policy had initially been implemented at Salisbury at members' request.

He said: "I have spoken to the racecourse chairman and we are going to discuss the issue internally in a couple of weeks.

"It may need reconsidering but there are other sides to the argument as well. We have had other members saying they do not like food in the enclosure."
 
They can be pretty Nazi like at Salisbury - I've watched the women (in particular) on one of the gates a few times when swooping on people demanding to see what is in their bags - "is it a picnic?" God forbid that anyone would be reluctant to pay the exorbitant prices at Salisbury and bring their own food instead! I put a bottle of Diet Coke sticking out of a side pocket a few times hoping she'd accost me and I could tell her exactly why I wouldn't be paying their ridiculous prices for drinks whilst working but unfortunately I've not been accosted by any of them yet!
 
I'm not surprised if the man was a bit cross his mother was 75, hardly 10 and running around out of control. I just wish the mother had plonked her cone in an appropriate place! But then there would have been a compensation claim for assult with an ice-cream. Would have been far more amusing than the Race Fixing Trial! How long do you reckon she would have been warned off for? What a sad, but amusingly so world, the racing world can be.
 
Shoving an ice cream into an gatemans, security officers or tosspot general managers face is surely a long way from wasting it ! Would have to be a cornet though, a magnum would not have the same effect. The effects of a single mr whippy would run down the suit or uniform far better than a chocolate smudge. The value therefore lies with a single cone, being the cheapest on offer although, should the ice cream man have tampered with the settings on his chilled cabinet the magnum may be softer than it should and could still yield a result you wouldnt expect
 
Traffic Warden's

:cool::<3:
uncle goober said:
Shoving an ice cream into an gatemans, security officers or tosspot general managers face is surely a long way from wasting it ! Would have to be a cornet though, a magnum would not have the same effect. The effects of a single mr whippy would run down the suit or uniform far better than a chocolate smudge. The value therefore lies with a single cone, being the cheapest on offer although, should the ice cream man have tampered with the settings on his chilled cabinet the magnum may be softer than it should and could still yield a result you wouldnt expect
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I am now temted to propell one mysef,:<3:
 
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