Diary of the Mug Punter

Thank heavens for the Mug Punter! For the second week in a row, his Mile High selection has got the money at decent odds and put some oomph into the horses to follow that we highlight in our Friday newsletter. It’s a funny old caper, this trying to pick a winner; after a blaze of long-priced winners around Spring carnival time last year, the Mug’s Mile Highs have had a very lean start to 2006. To his credit though, he has remained largely unperturbed during this drought.



Actually, if you listen to the Mug, he reckons that he thrives on tough times and periods of so-called failure. These are the times when you learn about yourself and what you’ve got to do to be better, says the Mug and importantly, it’s when you find out a lot about your so-called mates.



‘Fair weather sailors’ he calls them, those great guys who slap you on the back and can’t get enough of you when things are going great guns, but who go missing in action once the bottom drops out of it. Of course you find these giants of humanity everywhere, at work, in business, as casual acquaintances and on your sporting team but the Mug reckons he’s found more than his fair share in racing.



Strewth, he can remember in his younger days when he raced a few good horses, he almost had to employ a secretary to handle the phone calls on a Friday night and Saturday morning with hangers-on ringing up for a tip. Where are they all now that the party’s over and life’s just about passed him by?



It’s a question he often ponders after a losing day as he sits slapping mosquitoes on his front porch late on a Saturday night, senses stunned with a few Jack Daniels too many and Willie Nelson wailing like a coyote in the background. He could count on the fingers of one hand those who were there before the ride up and are still with him now that the journey’s just about run its course.



Mates, they call them, those few remaining blokes who still put up with you when you bore everyone else to death with the stories they’ve all heard a dozen times before, with your predictable responses and your dogmatic opinions. Those few blokes who are still prepared to make the effort to take you seriously when so many others have given up on you yonks ago. And those good old fellas who are still prepared to indulge your make-believe world, usually rooted somewhere in your shared pasts, where you all were kings or princes or whatever you need to have been to have made it all worthwhile.



This notion of male mateship is one that many women struggle with. The Mug remembers how his third wife cast great aspersions on the nature of the relationship that he shared with Johnno, one of his life-long mates whom he still keeps in touch with. She had a mean streak, that third one; thank god it didn’t last for the full year! But the Mug was most aghast when, on the basis of his relationship with Johnno that she had accused them of being, well, to put it politely, ‘gents who prefer other gents’.



Talking about men sharing the past, the Mug saw those geriatric refugees from the sixties, the Rolling Stones on television the other night. Can you remember when rock ‘n’ roll was all about the wild rebellion of the young? The Mug doesn’t know about you, but he finds it quietly disconcerting to watch these caricatures of the past with their wrinkles and arthritic fingers bopping about the stage like teenagers.



Actually, this is not just about the Rolling Stones, it’s about the whole generation of baby-boomers. The Stones wouldn’t be still a’boppin’ if the boomers weren’t a’watchin’.



What is it about these boomers who refuse to grow old anyway? Don’t they realize that there’s a limit to how far silicone and botox can take you? How long will it be before you find a can of underarm deodorant and a toothbrush packed in the coffin of one these dearly-departed ‘I want to live forever’ Peter Pans?



And talking about caricatures of the past, there was also the news that Hugh ‘Playboy’ Hefner had turned eighty. The new forty, they were calling it, as Hugh’s three live-in blondes lolled by his side.



The Mug doesn’t know whether he’s missing something here, but isn’t he supposed to be the odd one out with his infatuation for the punt and his devotion to the horses? Hells bells, life is for living and if you can’t fit it into three score years and ten, then you’re not living it hard enough or you’re too greedy.



And three blondes at eighty? Nah, the Mug’ll take a few race photos on the wall and a mate or two on the verandah to talk about the old times. After all, why put the pressure on yourself of trying to prove anything at eighty? What’s that old saying – The older I get, the better I was! That’ll do the Mug.