The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell

Couple of spoilers here...
This isn't a blockbuster movie, although it has some exciting go-kart racing early on. It's a small-scale, New Zealand film focused on a family to whom a tragedy (almost) happens.

Gazza Snell (blustering Australian actor William McInnes) is your self-made man with a cleaning business, but his big interest in life is getting his sons into professional car racing. The boys are both talented, but the hobby is eating up funds and Gazza's drawer is full of unpaid bills. There's also a small and undeveloped sub-plot about him running for the local council. He certainly has dreams, but he doesn't have much of a practical outlook.

His wife, Gail, (Robyn Malcolm, in a uncharacteristically subdued mode) is long-suffering, but when the major crisis hits the family - the younger boy is put into a coma after a track accident - she explodes.

Their older boy (Josh McKenzie) has his life run by his father. It's not that he doesn't enjoy racing, nor that he's no good at it, it's just that it's really his father's dream he's living, not his own.

The direction and particularly the pacing of the movie is excellent: the opening sequence establishes the characters quickly, the background of the family, and a good deal more...before the accident. From then on the movie takes a darker tone, with Gazza heavy-handedly crashing his way through all the situations, until he's finally brought to the realisation that there are some things he just can't change. And some that he can: his deceit, his false ambitions and his relationships with his family.

There are a couple of missteps in the movie: Joel Tobeck plays the next-door neighbour Ron (apparently his wife has gone, but we never hear much about this). He's there as a support for both Gazza and Gail, but in one scene he winds up supporting Gail in a rather more intimate way. Nothing more comes of this - Ron would like more, but Gail realises she's made a mistake. However, it undercuts Gail's integrity as a character, especially as she never admits to it having happened.

And in an early scene the younger boy, who only looks about 13 or 14, makes some sexual comment to a young woman who works for the cleaning company. She tells him to get lost, but after the movie is finished, and the credits start, she turns up again in the hospital and exposes her breasts the boy. It seems a bit tasteless, and undermines the well-tuned ending of the story.

To bet or not to bet

I think there's something in most of us that fancies the idea of getting rich quickly, even when we know that being well-off isn't necessarily as great as it's cut out to be. And I guess it's something that often comes to mind when we're worse off than usual; we may not want to be a millionaire, but a few extra dollars a week wouldn't go amiss. And yes, I know Jesus tells us to be content with what we have and seek the kingdom first, and generally speaking I aim to be content, and seek. Nevertheless there are days when....

Anyway, there have been a couple of times in my life when I've thought that I'd found the right scheme for betting on the horses. I've come across a few people who apparently live comfortably enough by successfully betting on the nags, but from what I can understand it's actually something you need to treat as a job, not a hobby. Doing it casually won't get the results. However, I wasn't planning on giving up my job at that point...

In general I don't go in for sports betting, but something about the horses has always intrigued me, and I actually enjoy going to the races once in a while. So when schemes that didn't seem to require too much effort came my way, I went for them. Yup, foolish.

There was one that required you to get hold of the weekly racebook, and by checking through the statistics figure out which horses fitted the category of ones you could bet on. There would be a disappointing number to bet on each week, I found. People who treat the thing as a hobby are inclined to expect to be able to bet on virtually anything with four legs. Nope, you don't.

I did try this method for a while, though not by actually using any real hard cash. Either I wasn't checking the stats correctly, or the horses decided that losing was better than winning. Anyway, I would have been a pauper if I'd continued on with this system (and used real money).

The other system I remember thinking very seriously about was a computer programme. All the stats were already entered in for you for all the horses through the country, and all you had to do was update these as the next lot of races came along. It looked foolproof. Hmm. It also cost quite a bit to get started on, and again, after great initial enthusiasm, I let it go.

Occasionally when I've been at the races I've had good days - doubling my $2 bet, for instance - but such days are few and far between (as are the days I actually go to the races). Still, there's something about the atmosphere at a race meeting; you see people you never seem to come across in your ordinary day. It's as if the city suddenly produced a pile of people were never walked the streets at any other time.

Somewhat off the subject of betting, but still on the subject of race meetings, I remember going to one particularly striking meeting. Halfway through the afternoon, huge black clouds came up over the hills. A chilly wind swept through the stands, and within minutes there was such a downpour that the gutters on the grandstand roof couldn't cope and the water was pouring off the roof like a constant sheet in front of the spectators. There was thunder and lightning and general weather mayhem.

Some people stood out in the rain - I suppose that's an experience in itself. The rest of us retreated away from the front of the stand, waited until Nature had done her dash, and then dashed ourselves for the cars, over some of the most sodden ground you've ever come across.

The photo is by Kirsten

A short conversation

So what’s a post on stocks and shares and horse racing doing on this site? I thought it was supposed to be about the arts.
Hmmm, don’t you consider there’s any art in betting on horses, or betting on shares?
I think that’s stretching the use of the word in this context just a little.
Okay, maybe it is, but it’s my blog and sometimes I can just choose what I want to write about. So there.
Yeah, but I thought you were going to make an effort to focus on the arts, instead of rolling all over the countryside picking up an idea from there and an idea from there.
Don’t you mean an idea from here and one from there?
Quibbling won’t help your argument.
Well, it is called Random Notes, and sometimes I just have to allow myself the chance to draw the wild card and go with whatever comes up.
And that’s your answer?
For the time being.
Pathetic.

Crowl's easy guide to the stockmarket.

I always thought the stock market was pretty easy to understand: it was similar to backing a horse in a race. If it wins, you get money; if it loses, you lose what you have.
I’ve always understood that if you have money in the stock market, you don’t sell when the value is heading downhill, and you don’t buy when it’s going uphill. Rather you do the reverse. I got this piece of wisdom from a book many years ago and it’s stuck with me.
Plainly I’m a bit naïve when it comes to stocks and shares because there are always new terms coming my way (even when I’m not looking for them) that I don’t understand at all. Yet the even the Motley Fool says you won't find a simpler strategy than buying and holding quality stocks. Isn’t that what I’ve just been saying? Don’t back the losers, back the winners. Yes, you’ll lose occasionally, but not often.
The other thing is, sit on your shares. According to another piece of market wisdom, shares that are left to grow will do so. They may have dips but in general good shares rise.
Of course such an approach doesn’t generate much interest on the stock market and someone came up with the idea of covered calls, a strategy which can generate some small extra income, but is also risky.
Well, some people like risk. Some people back apparent losers to win, and when they win come out with lots more money. So if you’re going to get involved with covered calls, make sure you have someone who knows what they’re doing helping you with it. There are even programs that can help, such as PowerOptions®. (It has that little copyright sign beside it because it’s copyright. Duh.)
PowerOptions® is said to be the only internet-based provider of data that gives investors the ability to make good decisions. It’s a bit like one of those books written by an old racing hand, the sort of person who really has been making money out of horses for decades. There’s no easy road to riches, but there are some helps along the way.

Dick Francis back on track

While travelling we’ve started listening to one of Dick Francis’ older books on tape - Against the Odds. It stars Francis’ most used character, Syd Halley, the jockey who lost a hand in a racing fall. Coincidentally, I’ve just finished one of Francis’ most recent books, Under Orders, which also stars Syd Halley, now with an electronic hand in place of the one he lost.
I’d been looking forward to reading this recent book, but it turns out to be a bit flaccid in places, padded in others, and with a weak ending. This is most unusual for Francis, as his books have normally appeared taut to me, and invariably the ending is violent and takes up a substantial amount of room in the later part of the story. Perhaps the fact that this is the first book he’s written since his wife died is part of the problem, or maybe he’s can no longer be bothered.
Syd still goes on about his (electronic) hand frequently. Plainly it’s something that bugs him a good deal, or maybe Francis thought we needed constant reminding of it, since it affects the ending. Syd apparently hasn’t aged much at all, as he has a fairly young girlfriend in this story, and he still has plenty of that old ability to recover from knocks to his body. And whereas in the book we’re listening to he’s plainly living in the 70s, in this new book he talks about things that belong to the current age: computers, cellphones, digital cameras, you name it. And the language has changed too; his characters swear - in the past they ‘uttered a stream of curses.’ The language is still nowhere near as offensive as many other thrillers, but it comes as a bit of a surprise to find it in one of Francis’ books.
Regrettably I have to say this is one Dick Francis I didn’t enjoy much. Maybe his wife did contribute more to his books than we’d thought!