[AusRace] The Triffid and scoffed at and scorned by Scott

[Tony Moffat]

9.6 THE TRIFFID+++++++++++++++++++++++

Dad had a radial fan with bronze blades, one of those ones that
swivelled, left and right, and there was no other choice, there was no
way to stop it, it had gears to choose the swivel speed but no way to
disengage them to leave it in one place, one direction full time. It
shuddered, it made a crinkling noise when changing from left sweep to
right sweep, and it moved, it waved itself around and it went right
faster than it went left.

I called it 'The Triffid' because it was tall on its pedestal, it
moved upwards a full 2 inches when changing direction, it made this
crinkling noise as I said, then it slumped down the previous 2 inches
and moved on its swing of 90 degrees, maybe a little more, before it
stopped, then stood up, then slumped down as it moved the other way.
Fascinating. We didn't have tv yet, can't you tell, and we sat at the
table in the dining room playing a boardgame or doing bookwork and
'The Triffid' did its thing over there, 'ick' upwards, a roar going to
the other side, then an 'ick' upwards before it came back. The power
cord was cloth covered and the plug was Bakelite. It had ten speeds,
well a lot anyway, it was infinitely variable speedwise, you slid a
lever at the back of the motor and it had to click three or more times
before you realised it was speeding up. The variable speed was a
selling point, because I reckon it had precious little else to commend
it, it could'nt stop to cool you, or your soup, it just oscillated
left then right with an ick sound at the start of each change of
direction. Ours may have had the front mesh removed and not replaced.
The blades where surrounded in a cage at the back and came forward
where there was a circle with nothing in it to prevent fingers or
hands or polony knobs or cucumbers being shoved in there, yes people
did those things, one did all of them at least once. My friend D took
the nose cone off the centre of the blade and drew concentric circles
on this, down its width, then coloured these lines yellow, black and
red/pink and when the fan rotates the nose cone wobbles, it doesn't
but it gives that impression and mesmerises you. Don't look at the fan
then is a common answer to peoples comment that they feel a flashback
coming on, it was the 60's. It got replaced with a new big plastic
blade fan that did everything, stopped, cooled your soup, oscillated,
was quiet. We solved the problem of what to get Dad for Christmas, we
got him a Parker pen, Mum got a fan, and some chocolate, because
everybody likes chocolate don't they, Mum is not keen, but Dad and me
like it.

I took to The Triffid with the axe. You never know, you never bloody
know.

I had typed from a young age, like two, alright three. I remember
standing on the chair to wind the paper in and around to get ready to
type. Type was a loose explanation. It was more pleasant sounds in the
early part, there were no words, nothing of consequence anyway.
Really, when I could spell, when I knew what a word looked like, what
they meant, I was skilled in typing. I knew that A was over here on
the left, and that ON was top right then bottom middle, and to me it
seemed automatic, those keys just fell into place with my two handed
pecking, not fast but steady, and by 5 I was as quick as my Mum and by
9 I was quite an automatic typist, I had left the hunt and peck style
behind, I thought of a sentence and as soon as the thought was
completed, it was visible on the page. It was magic. Dads typewriter
was an Imperial 66, a light green one and the family typewriter, a
grey one on the table on the back veranda was also an Imperial 66, as
was the machine at the Club, the Bowls Club and the Golf Club, the
primary school, the high school and the Police Station, so they were
popular. There was a supply of dozens of ribbons individually boxed
and wrapped in perspex in his office cupboard, and we never paid for
ribbon or paper or erasers or white out because we got his discards.
There were rubbers, round ones, with red tape through the hole in the
middle and all of that tied to the bottom bar so it was always handy. 

Dad stuck to his Parker blue pen and if you were stuck for a present
buy him one of those, the ink user model though. They break, wear out
kind of, the ink bladder goes awol and leaks in his pocket and the
shirt ends up being cut up and used by me as rags to clean the mower
with. But, yeah, he liked his Parker pens and had about 15 in a drawer
in his desk, including a gold coated one with a gold nib. The electric
typewriters came and he had one of those, a round ball writer, quick
and deadly, it sounded efficient and was made to sound and react with
electric quickness.

His two Imperial 66 were in his garage at his retirement home later,
along with a supply of ribbons sufficient for 10 lifetimes, with
paper, and erasers, and Parker ink and pens, and his big jarrah desk
with vinyl insert and inkwell. He had 1700 clients, and no computer.

For 11 years I got ratings weekly, every Tuesday they arrived,
priority post, from North Ryde post office, and that night, or by
Wednesday mid morning, I had the Sporting Globe and the race pictures
from Saturdays races and the sheets got stapled to that and I read and
computed how they had arrived at the rating for most of the horses,
only those out to 5 lengths were examined so over time I had a
considerable collection of data, occasionally I had a bet on a mid
week race, it depended on shifts and schedules though, and
occasionally the raters provided information from SA or QLD or WA.

I had cards printed, almost A4 size and on these I did the schematics
for each chosen race, I ignored barrier and later ignored rider
changes. There were spaces for the jockey name, the weight, the
barrier, the date of the run used as the base for this race, the
rating. From the rating I deducted todays weight and generally I
stopped there. My thinking was that I could not be that precise to
zero in on the winner, instead I chose to back several to get me a
dividend. Trifectas and quinellas then were an earner for me, my bank
size jumped with the occasional 100% dividend from them, rather than a
supply of steady winners which still arrived using the ratings.

I had conversed with the rater, the provider, about correcting for
weight carried then and now, and the barrier. He had a book with
examples of workouts in it and in each of those, bar three, the winner
was selected at the point I stopped at, the weight deduction from the
rating. However he made a good and eloquent point in answering me and
as he had used his corrections in his book he maintained his stance.
There is a sample there, in the book, where Gala Supreme is one of
three selections in The Cup, it's ability score is improved by
stopping at the weight deduction phase. In the Gala Supreme matter I
also queried the use of barrier correction, in a two mile race. I am
still not correcting for jockeys, treating them as 0, neither a plus
or minus just a requirement. The rater maintains that a runner is
improved by running this distance with less weight, a longer race with
less weight. The runners score is decreased by running this distance
with more weight, by running a longer distance with more weight. It is
changeable what difference a lesser distance makes with more or less
weight this race. This is the accelerating/de-acclerating effect, the
ADE, that was scoffed at and scorned by Scott. The man who owned the
ratings was very generous with his time and trouble in responding to
my queries. These were always typed in the Imperial 66 typeface, as
were his rating sheets although I was told these were composed on an
early version of a composite program, similar to printing compositors,
still in what was Imperial 66 typeface as I said. I still have these,
the ratings and the type written replies to my questions.

On Friday nights, we had a joint child minding deal, come for bbq and
beer, and work on tomorrows races, girls allowed and this went well
for a few years. I did Melbourne both Handicapping and Weight Rating
with another bloke, two others did Sydney, where there were better
betting bonuses, together we did Brisbane and Adelaide. The group
folded, it shrunk to 4 or so couples and was always at my place where
the data was essentially but different needs and interests arose, kids
grew. We moved and that was the end of it. I kept subscribing to the
ratings but in a year or so found myself doing the workouts
infrequently, and working a Saturday more often was a dampener,
together with T ball and Rumpus, we moved again and it was impossible
to get the ratings before Friday, priority paid or not and there were
no form papers until mid day Saturday and none during the week. I
cancelled after 11 years but it was still viable and remains so I
believe. I have had a phone TAB account continually since 1978, about
when they started I reckon. Towards the end I got a Canon programmable
calculator with the rating program installed, you banged away at that
tiny keyboard entering the data you wanted assessed and it went off
with its 8k ram, the screen went blank, you tapped your pencil and it
returned with an answer and the Basic Y/N? and in the end it collated
everything and priced the runners to 80%, very civilised. The kids
joined in, it was marked on the calendar whose night it was, so it was
deadly serious. I went to a TRS80 , perhaps more for the Pong than the
ponys, again this was popular with the kids. It all ended when I
cancelled the subscription though. This was about the time they became
Neddybank and that was off-putting. 

Cheers

 

Tony



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