The Horse Whisperer (Sort Of)

Our Dad, who always answered to the name Colin, fancied himself as a judge of horseflesh. Dad and his younger brother Jack used to work for the Calcutta Port Trust, with Dad as traffic manager and Uncle Jack as docks manager. Every Monday, Dad would come home and regale us with yarns of how his fellow workers used to praise him for his astute judgement of how his race tips were always so accurate.

But, hey, that was Dad's version.

Uncle Jack would just sit there, throwing his head back and chortling in that wonderful way of his. He was torn between a) fierce family loyalty and b) the supreme urge to tell the truth.
The way he told it, Dad would always have at least one big fan at work each week.

His theory was that Dad gave out so many (different) race tips that he was always bound to pass on one winner. And for every winner on a Monday morning, there were a dozen blokes who had done their dough.