The Homely Atmosphere of the Point-to-Point 



Civic Guard. The presence of a fruiterer's cart with a 

 broken wheel does not make his task anything easier, 

 and when a huge brown -panelled horse-box whose 

 designers overlooked the existence of boreens lumbers 

 labouringly past him towards a gate further up the road, 

 he eventually bids us enter. In low gear, with engine 

 racing, one swings through the entrance, swerves left- 

 handed, as directed, and churns onwards over gorse- 

 strewn, straw-littered mud to the uneven but more 

 solid firmness of old, well-grazed ridge-and-furrow. 



The car-park is on the brow of a hill. From here 

 one commands a splendid view of the course. Behind 

 the cars bookmakers' umbrellas add a dash of colour to 

 the scene. Dressing-tents, weighing-in-tent and lunch- 

 eon-marquees give a fete effect. Glowing braziers serve 

 the dual purpose of heating water for tea and warming 

 a jolly circle of chubby little urchins. Elfin mites, with 

 cheery cheeks, laughing eyes, and tweed caps several 

 sizes too large for their tousled heads. Some hold one 

 foot towards the brazier, then the other, changing foot 

 positions as dexterously as geese on a frosty morning. 

 One little fellow, determined on warming his hands at 

 the risk of toasting his face, stood with palms out- 

 stretched, fingers upwards and head flung back, in an 

 unconscious pose that would have done credit to a 

 ballet-dancer. 



Through a rush-littered gap in a hedge one enters 

 the saddling enclosure, if that term could ever be applied 

 to an unfenced portion of a sixty-acre field. It is just 

 such little incongruities that lend the homely touch to 

 Point-to-Points. They are the races of the local hunt, 



G g/ (DI28o) 



