Roundabout
Trotting
THE FEW hun- dreds gathered under the blue- grey sky stirred from the rather uncomfortable stone- terraced seats of Woolwich Stadium and shuffled 'nearer to the rails as the loudspeaker boomed out 'Good evening all—welcome to a Monday evening of horse-trotting.' The horses were just entering the arena, pawing the track gingerly like an ice-skater testing a newly frozen lake. Behind them, each seated on his 'sulky' (a cradle-shaped trap), the riders, dressed in red, blue, yellow and white blouses and caps, leaned back, indifferent to the crowd.
`Anyone wanna bet?' Wavy-haired and be- spectacled, his Adam's-apple bobbing up and down agitatedly, a bookmaker enticed the backers With 3 to 1 on the favourite. Another, in striped jacket and dark tie, patted his hands together like a Pastry-cook slapping dough, in answer to the tick-tacking of his colleague up in the grandstand. `Come on,' he shouted, 'someone must back the Winner—they've all got four legs.'
'All into line, please,' cried the loudspeaker. 'Hurry up and get Mary into position.' But Mary Was not to be hurried, flicked her tail in her driver's eye. 'Now go!' Three times round the track they trotted, all beautiful; the traps seemed to be flying chariots. The lucky ones collected their winnings. Twenty pounds went to a red-faced hulk of a man, who Was soon discussing how much he intended to win en the next race; his wife, dismissed from a man's World, leaned heavily on the rails. Near by, be- neath a large black umbrella, the proprietor of a jellied-eels stall was doing good business, while his Warted the customers to go easy with the salt. The sky darkened, the end of the evening ap- Prnaehed. The third bookie, who had previously conducted his business in silence, broke into life. 'here WO are, last chance to raise your holiday Money; A small boy, in tartan jacket and trousers, Pulled miserably, at his mother's coat. 'Can't play °11 the grass now?' he asked. 'You stop where you can be seen,' said his mother. 'We only came here to Show you the horse-racing.'
Preserving :111E 32nd Annual General Meeting of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England was held ul the Henry Jarvis Room at the Royal Institute of British Architects, This turned out to be an (*li-Panelled grotto on the lower ground floor With, diffused lighting and a dozen rows of fauteuils. In the adjoining room a table was laid out with pamphlets with titles like Town and Country Planning, How to Prune Trees, and Scenery of England ('In the misty sunshine of early morning I gazed on the panorama of Gothic architecture in Parliament Square'). At twenty to three the Duke of Norfolk ap- peared at the head of the Executive Committee, apologising for the delay and insisting it was all is fault. After the minutes of the last meeting had been briskly disposed of the Duke called on Mr. Clough Williams-Ellis. Mr. Williams-Ellis, a well-preserved seventy-five, displayed a certain raffish elegance in his long, dark jacket and dog- tooth trousers. His face was lean, his hair white, receding at his forehead and flying off towards the back of his head as if he had been in a high wind. Standing hunched over the rostrum with his hands wide apart on the rail he looked like an old- fashioned evangelist, but his speech was as low on howl as it was high on gloss. He said that the members of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England formed an elect, and so should not shy from the responsibility of influencing public taste. He believed in the amateur—with the stress heavily on the last syllable—and dismissed the argument that the threat of nuclear destruction might make their efforts seem trivial by saying, 'If I am doomed to die in a ditch from blast or fall-out,I would prefer it to have primrose banks and not to be a dismal drain.'
The audience (mainly elderly ladies in flowerpot hats and weekend-ramble men) applauded, and the discussion began. A man from the North Mid- lands spoke of the bother they had had preserving their flora up there and another advised the Coun- cil to get itself a snappier name. Next door the leaders of the rush for tea and sandwiches found a man with a weatherbeaten face and a sweet tooth already tucking in happily.
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