Lullaby with a Y

When children are knee-high to a grasshopper it is customary for responsible parents to put their babies to sleep with relaxing stories or music or to hum to them. After exhausting my supply of exhilarating tractor tales (and this was long before Bob the Builder, by the way) it was evident that sleep was not on the agenda for the offspring. The only thing for it was to sing to them. The following song always done the trick for my boys. I got the feeling they fell asleep so I wouldn’t sing any more songs. The vocalist in the video sings a wee bit better than me.

* in other related news. I don’t gamble but a friend took me into a bookmakers on Saturday morning before we went to the Rangers game (£17 for a ticket, S-man, twenty rows up behind the goals, great view, 4-1 over the mighty Brechin City, and in other related blogs, stuff your classics 🙂 ). While the gamblers gambled I watched the Ashes on one of the screens and then had a wee look at some of the race cards. Bohemian Rhapsody! There was a horse running at Ascot called Freddy with a Y. As Any Fule Charioteer Kno it is Freddie with an ie ( pronounced I E). I rushed over to my friend with this dastardly piece of information.

“There’s a horse running at Ascot and it’s called Freddy with a Y.”

“Freddy?” he said.

“Aye. Freddie with a Y.” I replied.

“They don’t give horses simple names. The owners like them to stand out. Are you sure it’s not Freddy something or other?”

“No, it’s Freddie with a Y.”

“I know it’s Freddy but it can’t just be Freddy. It’s Freddy what?” He said, angrily.

“No whats. Y.” This was getting to be like Abbott and Costello’s first base routine.

“Why what? What are you talking about?”

It was only after I put him in a headlock and marched him over to the card on the wall that he registered what I was trying to explain i.e. it made sense to him in the end.

He then educated me in the Christening of equines. The naming of racehorses in Britain is very carefully controlled by Weatherbys, the company which oversees many administrative areas of the sport. Strict criteria are applied in judging what name a horse can and cannot be given. For example, horses names cannot be longer than 18 characters including spaces. Names currently on the Register of Horse Names or names of horses who have won a major flat or jump race cannot be used (so there can only be one Mill Reef or Dancing Brave or Shergar or Tractor Heaven). And most famously, names whose meaning, pronunciation or spelling is obscene or insulting are prohibited.

And after all this, at the end of the day, Freddie with a Y was a non-runner.